


rare earths and trace elements

by presumenothing (justjoy)



Series: fma fics [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: (basically a bit of everything as usual), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drabble Collection, Gen, Humor, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 67
Words: 32,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justjoy/pseuds/presumenothing
Summary: #62: "…I'm constitutionally incapable of swearin' at you, Lieutenant, you know that."#63: At the last minute Riza replaces the autograph sheet with a piece of paperwork and dares either of you to say anything.#64: "How fares Miss Rockbell?"#65: She's been looking forward to the day when her hair finally gets long enough to – well, no longer beshort.#66: "Come to Xing for new year's, he said. It'll be fun, he said."#67: Ed's almost twenty when he realises that Hawkeye must've been around his age when she was deployed to Ishval.(fmab ficlet collection with a generous serving of post-canon shenanigans and a side of AUs)
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric & Riza Hawkeye, Alphonse Elric & Roy Mustang, Alphonse Elric & Winry Rockbell, Edward Elric & Riza Hawkeye, Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell, Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Winry Rockbell
Series: fma fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882300
Comments: 183
Kudos: 260





	1. [al, winry, ed; post-promised day]

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mess because i am a mess. enjoy anyway
> 
> main characters and canon/au notes in chapter titles, with any content warnings in chapter notes. expect a healthy dose of post-promised day fic with a side of canon-divergence AU for spice, and a lot (a _lot_ ) of the resembool kids, hawkeye, and mustang 
> 
> all crossposted from [tumblr](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com), so feel free to follow me there for more of whatever-this-is beamed directly into your brain at high speed!! i also ramble more about AUs there, and regularly accept prompts, if that sweetens the deal for anyone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Actually, Winry – can you do something for me?” 
> 
> Winry continues towelling her hair dry as she glances up. “Of course, Al. What is it?”

“Actually, Winry – can you do something for me?” 

Winry continues towelling her hair dry as she glances up. “Of course, Al. What is it?”

“Brother… he gets these nightmares, sometimes. Bad ones.” Al is stifling a yawn even as he speaks, leaning heavier on his cane than when he and Ed had first arrived earlier, but still his eyes are clear when he looks back. “Especially when we were on missions, so maybe he won’t get them now we’re back in Resembool, but will you keep an eye out anyway? I mean, I used to wake him up if it got too bad, but…”

But that was when Al had been clanking around in a suit of armour, instead of a still-recovering human body who desperately needed the rest, Winry fills in mentally. 

She nods with an easy grin. “Sure thing! Though I think Dan might notice before either of us do, actually.”

They both laugh at that just as Ed walks back in, and he squints suspiciously at them. “Notice what?”

“Nothing~” Winry singsongs, exchanging the towel for a hairbrush. “Now get out of my room, both of you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> al: well sometimes ed's nightmares are about only reaching the buffet line when the food's already run out and from his reaction it's hard to tell which is which


	2. [roy, riza; about alchemy]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Betcha get lots of practice from looking in the mirror,_ Fullmetal snarks unhelpfully in his head.

“Lieutenant. Would you ever consider learning alchemy?”

The even scratch of Hawkeye’s pen off to his left doesn’t even falter, but he knows she’s heard. She always hears.

Besides, this has absolutely nothing to do with what they’re doing (filling out after action reports) and everything to do with where they are (her hospital room).

“Simple defense, maybe some weapon creation. Generalist stuff,” he says, and means _not flame alchemy_.

“Edward will have another fit if he hears you calling him that,” she replies, which means she’s definitely gonna snitch on him at some point just for the fireworks.

Roy sighs, but he’d already expected this going in, and had decided to ask anyway. “It does make him difficult to take down, you have to admit.”

He can’t help a wince at the _clack_ of Hawkeye setting her pen down. “I didn’t get injured this time because I was _disarmed_ , Colonel. Nor the last time.”

Nor the time before that, Roy finishes mentally, but still. “Even a basic wall could’ve reduced your injuries, at the very least.”

“And hypothetically, if I were to find myself in that situation again – where should I find the time to draw an entire array, pray tell? Let alone how long it would take for me to master that much.”

And that’s a necessity, not an ideal, because sending people with half-trained skillsets into the field is a good way to get not just them but everyone killed; they both know that.

“There’s always…” gloves, he wants to say, except – yeah, he can recognise a lost cause when he sees one.

( _Betcha get lots of practice from looking in the mirror,_ Fullmetal snarks unhelpfully in his head.)

Roy pinches the bridge of his nose. “My apologies. Please forget I said anything.”

“Indeed. I suggest you never ask me that again, either.” Hawkeye picks her pen back up, and pointedly forges his signature on her report right before his eyes. “Black Hayate is wanting for his extra-special treats, should you need a better way to express concern.”

…at least she hadn’t offered to make _him_ the treat.

Roy nods, and adds both of their reports to the stack beside him. “I’ll stop by to get some after these are filed. Shall I drop them at your flat?”


	3. [roy, riza, winry; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s just simple clerical error that leads to Edward Elric retaining his title and pay as a State Alchemist, even after the Promised Day.
> 
> No, really.

**i.**

It’s just simple clerical error that leads to Edward Elric retaining his title and pay as a State Alchemist, even after the Promised Day.

No, really.

* * *

**ii.**

“That’s everything for today, except…”

Off to his left he can hear the distinct sound of Hawkeye hesitating, as if she’s had any qualms dumping paperwork all over his hospital bed so far. For all the good any document is going to do him right now.

At least she continues before he can snap at her to spit it out already. “Except the authorisation form to renew Edward’s State Alchemist qualification for another two years. Sir.”

– and there it is, the complete silence even from Fuery and Breda in the corner. 

With the absolute chaos that had broken out (and still not really abated) since the Promised Day, the flow of information is unusually fragmented especially with the Briggs forces returned to the North. Many in Central have heard about Roy’s own blindness, but news about the Fullmetal Alchemist, on the other hand…

“Well, what do you know,” Roy deadpans. “Suddenly I can’t read.”

* * *

**iii.**

“And this is good for another two years, you said?” Winry asks again, just to be sure.

(She’s already pinched herself twice and it had _hurt_ both times, no thanks to Ed for practice. So this is definitely happening, but – she can’t have heard this correctly, right?)

“Essentially, yes. State Alchemist licenses are infamously hard to earn and even harder to renew, but they’re just as impossible to lose afterwards,” Lieutenant Hawkeye answers calmly, like this is just everyday business and not a deliberate breach of some probably-very-important legal requirement.

…then again, according to Al, the lieutenant had literally been the second-in-command of the entire coup d’état, so maybe a little lawbreaking was nothing compared to turning Central upside down. (Ed had grunted something derogatory about politics while Al had been talking, but Winry pretty much takes that as confirmation anyway.)

Anyway. Winry decides to chalk this up to the general insanity that is apparently contagious around Ed and Al, and moves on to the first of her other questions. “Should I tell Ed?”

“I trust you can decide that for yourself,” the lieutenant says, and maybe those words mean something else in military-speak, but to Winry it sounds clearly like _you’re the one who has to deal with Ed if he yells about this, so._

Well. That’s fair, she figures. “I really appreciate this, Ms Hawkeye, but honestly, we don’t need the extra funds – our automail business is doing fine, and I even roped Al into helping out as part of his PT.”

“Since Edward hasn’t been discharged from the military, I can have the colonel issue him an explicit order not to be a freeloader, if that would help,” comes the reply, in a dryly longsuffering tone reminiscent of Granny Pinako. “Do you have any idea how much a State Alchemist of this calibre earns each year, Miss Winry?”

“Um. Not specifically? I know it’s a lot, but…”

There’s a cough from the other end of the line that Winry gathers would’ve been a hysterical laugh on most other people, and then Lieutenant Hawkeye tells her.

_Bloof,_ goes Winry’s brain as it momentarily crashes before coming back online. “That’s _ridiculous_ ,” she manages to say faintly.

“It’s nominally a research fund,” the lieutenant continues, having patiently waited out the dumbfounded pause. “Which can make things rather difficult for those alchemists not so inclined, but in Edward’s case that’s hardly a problem.”

Winry can’t help the huff of amusement, because it _really_ isn’t. Alchemist or not, even now Ed and Al still live and breathe alchemy like they were born to it, the both of them – she’d been briefly worried about that when she found out what happened, because if Ed decided to wash his hands of all things alchemy then where would that leave Al?

But no, Ed can’t stop himself studying alchemy any more than Winry can stop seeing automail and all things mechanical even in her dreams.

And she might not know the details of everything that happened on the Promised Day, but she knows enough of it (and everything before) that she’s fairly certain it’s arguable that Ed and Al’s continued survival against everything they’ve been through is enough to qualify as a research study all by itself.

“I hope he and Al have at least been handling their money responsibly,” she mutters half-under her breath.

“They do well enough,” Lieutenant Hawkeye allows. “Besides, given the typical nature of their excursions, a considerable portion of their expenses was regularly reimbursed, at least once the finance department was persuaded that Edward could possibly be doing that many missions in so short a time.”

Something about the tone of that last line tells her that the lieutenant herself had been responsible for _persuading_ them about that, and oh, what wouldn’t Winry have given to see that? Even just imagining it made her sigh happily. 

“I suppose the house could always do with some repairs, and there’s some modifications I’ve been meaning to try out for Ed’s leg – nothing essential, but since he’s staying put for once…” Winry trails off, before blinking herself back out of elaborate cobalt-chromium alloy imaginings. “There isn’t exactly much else to buy in Resembool, though.”

“Believe me, I understand,” she answers like she really does. “But if I were to suggest… think beyond the essentials, Miss Winry.”

Winry’s pretty sure she sounds as confused as the feels. “Huh?”

“When you are old enough,” Lieutenant Hawkeye says sternly, “you will learn the importance of treating yourself. I can mail you my personal shortlist of the best shops in East City, if you feel like making the trip,” she continues, voice turning dry again over Winry’s burst of laughter. “And I’m sure Alphonse still has quite a few items on that wishlist of his.”

“Oh, for sure,” Winry agrees; they hadn’t even gotten back to it after crossing off apple pie and the few other foods they could make at home. “Is it really okay though, to use this money for that?”

“Even if you forget the colonel for a moment–” (Winry thinks she hears an indignant squawk in the background at this point, but maybe she’s really misheard this time?) “–there’s a long line of officials here in Command that are able and more than willing to sign off on that form, Miss Winry, so I don’t see why the three of you shouldn’t use it any way you like.”

“If you say so, then.”

“Of course. And I really must be going now,” the lieutenant adds. “It was a pleasure talking to you again, Miss Winry. Do send the Elrics my best regards, if you decide to let them know about this, and tell Edward the colonel called it equivalent exchange, so bring any complaints to him directly.”

…she’s definitely not imagining it this time: there’s a distinct splutter from the lieutenant’s end of the line that sounds so much like Ed when he gets really _really_ annoyed, and Winry laughs. “I’ll be sure to pass on the message if I tell him. Thanks for calling, Ms Hawkeye!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ed, when he finds out, probably: you dID WHAT WITH THE PAPERWORK omg the colonel really is a corrupting influence on you lieutenant


	4. [roy, al; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That has in turn totaled up into one longstanding certainty: that one day, the State Alchemist programme will need the Elrics more than the Elrics need it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise addition to [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006/chapters/57492874), because al insisted on having a say and who am i to stop him

**iv.**

Quite frankly speaking, Roy has never known whether to believe that the Elrics would get their bodies back. He doesn’t know anywhere near enough about human transmutation to judge for himself – until he ends up knowing far too much, at which point his judgement is _not even possible let alone probable, but well, Elrics._

And because it’s the Elrics, he can just as honestly say that he’s never doubted that they’d find a way to succeed somehow. 

That has in turn totaled up into one longstanding certainty: that one day, the State Alchemist programme will need the Elrics more than the Elrics need it.

(And there’s no doubt, either, that it’s not one or the other but _both_ – they're a package deal, driving and drawing strength from each other. It’s a concept Roy is not unacquainted with.)

…however, now that this day has come, Roy finds that he still has no idea what to do about it.

Unfortunately that doesn’t excuse him from picking up the phone despite the rapidly growing sense of foreboding, because if he leaves it for one more ring Hawkeye will stab him with her pen _and_ make him clean it up too.

Let the record show that he is doing this under duress. 

“Mustang speaking.”

“External call for you, sir. From – Alphonse Elric?” The operator’s slightly-confused tone as she reads out the name suggests she’s not had the pleasure of acquaintance with either Elric.

Alas, that Roy cannot count himself among that lucky number. “Put him through, thank you.”

“One moment, please.” The click-clack of a call being transferred sounds like doom.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Al says in worryingly dulcet tones.

“Hello, Alphonse,” Roy greets, and that is definitely an amused twitch he sees from the direction of Hawkeye’s desk. “To what do I owe this call?”

“You’re a smart man, sir. Figure it out.”

It sounds like a compliment, but the Elrics don’t _do_ baseless flattery. Well, Fullmetal doesn’t do compliments, period, but Al? 

Roy isn’t a swordsman by any stretch of the word, but he knows a double-edged blade when he sees one.

“Miss Rockbell told you?”

“She confirmed it for me,” Al answers, which means Roy has figured correctly, at least. “I’ve been managing Brother’s funds since I was eleven, Colonel, did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

Now he notices that it’s unusually quiet on Al’s end of the line, or at least significantly more quiet than Roy would’ve expected from that house in Resembool. 

Had Al waited until Ed and Winry were out before making this call? He wouldn’t be surprised.

“I don’t know what I thought, honestly. Though I never intended to hide it from either of you.”

“What a relief,” Al says except he doesn’t sound it at all, and _why_ doesn’t click into place until he speaks again. “I imagine it’d be hard to hide anyway, if and when the military tries to order Brother around again.”

This time Hawkeye’s twitch is one of concern instead, because Roy’s pretty sure he looks as horrified as he feels. “I don’t– I would _never_ , Al, that’s not what this is about! F– _Ed’s_ more than fulfilled whatever obligations he might’ve had, he’s free and clear. Both of you are.”

“And the military would do well to remember that.” Al’s voice is still severe, but at least less flat than it was before. “Can you guarantee that he won’t ever be called upon?”

“I’m still his commanding officer, Al,” Roy answers, but it sounds like hollow reassurance even as he says it; they of all people know that the military is hardly uncorrupt.

Ordinarily he’d have been able to say that there weren’t many people with both the rank and reason to override his authority just to command a State Alchemist, and it’d even be true.

However. 

Fullmetal might be many things but _ordinary_ has never been one of them, and if anything happened to him Al would come for Roy’s head because Hawkeye would make sure he got first dibs. And Roy would deserve it.

Hawkeye gives him a deadpan look when he glances beseechingly at her before relenting with a nod, and Roy turns back to the phone. “I’ll get Fuhrer Grumman to personally sign a letter discharging Ed of any further duties, if that’s what it takes.”

“That would be acceptable, yes,” Al says, apparently less-than-impressed by the supreme authority of their nation; the Elrics are really something else. “Now that we’re going into the city more often, I give it another few weeks at most before he realises, and I’d expect another much louder phone call when he does.”

Roy winces. Message received – he’d better have that letter ready by then, and also an explanation for his reasons that won’t lead to Fullmetal kicking down his door, because if there’s anything Ed dislikes even more than favours, it’s charity. “Understood.”

The sudden brightness in Al’s voice would be enough to give anyone whiplash. “Well, I shan’t delay you from your duties any longer, then – please send my regards to Lieutenant Hawkeye, and Winry’s thanks for her recommendations!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unrelatedly! i turn a quarter-century old tomorrow, yeet,


	5. [ed, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But; and isn’t that always the problem?

“I guess I just – want to figure out who I am. _Me,_ not the Fullmetal Alchemist,” Edward says haltingly, and Riza recognises the twist of his mouth from her own mirror.

Not unhappy, but –

But; and isn’t that always the problem?

“What you said before, when you told us about the trade. About not being lesser just because you didn’t have alchemy anymore.” Riza keeps her eyes carefully on Black Hayate, tail wagging madly as he bounces between them. “Did you mean that?”

Although she barely needs her peripheral vision to see his reaction to that, anyway. “Wha– ‘course I did– do, whatever! What’s that got to do with anything!?”

It’s genuine confusion she hears, so Riza only pins him with a still-patient look rather than the glare she reserves for subpar ammunition. “Because that means the converse applies, too. The Fullmetal Alchemist isn’t any _more_ than you are now, either. Everything you did back then, good or bad or _downright reckless_ –” (Edward gives a laughing wince at the dry tone she adds that last part in) “–all that is you too. Even now.”

Edward doesn’t say anything in answer, and Riza lets it be; for all that he and the colonel are each loud if in different ways (and heavens forbid they hear that from her) she is well-acquainted with the fact that silence is the furthest thing from inactivity for them.

But because of that same familiarity she knows not to let the silence stretch out too long, either. So after a few minutes – in which she ascertains that Edward is indeed not hesitating over some response – she gets up and brings both of their mugs to the kitchen for a refill. “Either way, you can safely assume you have my full approval this time, so long as you run whatever plans they are by Alphonse and Winry first.”

“I don’t need anyone’s _permission_ ,” Ed grumbles, followed by a weirdly heartwarming: “Not even yours, Lieutenant.”

“Still, you have it,” Riza says with equanimity as she turns back around, and is quite certain she’s not fooling herself about the shift of Edward’s shoulders into something looser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, banging pots and pans 24/7: PARENTAL RIZA PARENTAL RIZA PARENTAL RI-
> 
> *is sniped by hawkeye for being a nuisance*


	6. [roy, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Besides, the scars on his palms have been – pardon his language – _hurting like a bitch_ ever since he woke to this gloomy weather this morning.

_Don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask,_ says the rational part of his brain when he notices it again one stormy afternoon in the office, but unfortunately the rumours of Hawkeye being 95% of his impulse control aren’t as exaggerated as Roy would like.

Besides, the scars on his palms have been – pardon his language – _hurting like a bitch_ ever since he woke to this gloomy weather this morning. And while Roy doesn’t believe that misery loves company (quite the opposite, actually, with how much he hates anyone and especially her getting hurt) it’s not the first time he’s noticed this from her, though neither of them have so much as mentioned it until now.

Decided, Roy looks up and over at her. “Does it hurt still?”

To her credit Hawkeye doesn’t try to pretend; doesn’t drop the hand that’s rubbing lightly at her neck, only huffs and mimes tossing a wad of paper at him. (She’s too respectful to ever do that for real; respecting of the paperwork, that is, not him, and what a sorry state of affairs it is.) “Not as much as you will if that stack of forms isn’t completed and on my desk by the end of the day, colonel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> roy doesn't even need to cut the sleeves off his shirts when riza isn't around, he just burns them off


	7. [roy, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ishval had given him plenty of practice at that soldier’s art of taking even the lightest of naps whenever circumstances permitted, though still scarcely enough to make up for all the sleep he’s lost since then.

The thing is, Roy remembers when he’d never had any trouble sleeping without a light on.

Or rather – he’d had trouble _sleeping_ , yes, but that had been the same whether it was pitch dark or high noon. Ishval had given him plenty of practice at that soldier’s art of taking even the lightest of naps whenever circumstances permitted, though still scarcely enough to make up for all the sleep he’s lost since then.

But even before Ishval he had never been picky about where or how he slept; if he did fall asleep with a light on it was invariably because he’d dozed off in the middle of deciphering some alchemy text.

So it’s not something he’s ever given much thought to before, and much as he wants to imagine Fullmetal cackling _of course the big bad Flame Alchemist doesn’t need to sleep with a light on_ that would actually be doing a disservice to Ed’s late-blooming sense of common decency.

Though the thought is enough to make him wonder what the erstwhile alchemist would say if he found out that Roy has taken to sleeping with a small lamp by his bedside at all times.

(As with many other things in his apartment and life in general, it’d been left on his desk one morning, an impromptu paperweight holding down the morning’s briefing courtesy of Riza.

Waking up to darkness hadn’t started turning absolutely terrifying until at least a few days after Marcoh restored his sight, and Roy doesn’t know why the delayed reaction, nor how Riza had known when he hadn’t even told her.)

(Yet. He would’ve told her, eventually, at least once he’d come to terms with it himself – but then again, she did have the habit of knowing him better than he knew himself, sometimes.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *roy and ed, flipping a coin to decide which is more traumatic: enforced total blindness or losing limbs*


	8. [al, ed; bad idea au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed has never had reason to hate how swiftly his mind works, not until now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw canon-typical body horror?

Ed has never had reason to hate how swiftly his mind works – not until now, when realisation hits with the force of a rebound.

_“What have you done to my brother!”_

The roar rips itself from his throat, but it takes him precious seconds more to register that the weight crushing the air out of his lungs is a physical one, pinning him flat on the floor instead of leaping at Tucker like he’d wanted to.

Al (Alphonse, Alexander – _damn_ Tucker to the worst depths of hell, had he been laughing when he noticed?) raises his head and gives Ed a glare that’s all too familiar.

(And isn’t it just twisted in a whole new way, that _this_ is the first time he’s seen those golden eyes in too many years? Ed can feel the laugh spiking up sandpaper rough from the back of his throat, and clenches his teeth against it; if he starts laughing now he knows he will never stop.)

* * *

“Tucker needed a human soul, for his transmutation.” 

The storm beats loud against the windows of Mustang’s office, but Al’s voice is still perfectly audible to those gathered – quiet and increasingly confident. because if there’s anyone in the world who’s even more experienced than Ed at adapting to a new body, it’s his brother.

Ed had thought he _hated_ that fact before, more than he could hate anything else but Hohenheim. Clearly, he’d been wrong.

(Al’s starting to be able to string words together more easily too, even if none of it is what Ed wants to hear.

Back at Tucker’s residence it had been a struggle for Al to say anything besides _Nina_ and _brother_ and _no._ But even then it’d been Al who’d stopped Ed from snapping irreparably right then and there, Al who’d stood between Tucker and them and refused to budge until the military police arrived, so that the success couldn’t inspire a repeat performance out of the bioalchemist.)

(The last time – and _that’s_ twisted, definitely, that they have a tally of these events – the last time something like this had happened, it’d also been Al who picked Ed up and ran all the way to the Rockbell’s house in a completely foreign body because Ed would’ve bled out otherwise, and now –

Damn it all, how many more times is he going to fail to protect Al?)

“We’re already working to get our bodies back, after all. And this isn’t that different from the armour. Not fundamentally.”

A strangled noise escapes Ed despite himself, and out the corner of his eye he spots the movement of both Hawkeye and Mustang looking at him, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“It was me or her,” Al says, far too clearly; he doesn’t turn to look over at where Nina has fallen asleep on the couch in exhausted bewilderment, but then he doesn’t need to. “So I chose me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, yesterday: hey i had a bad idea what if tucker had used _ed_ for his transmutation instead of nina
> 
> me, today: ………hey guys guess what i have!! an _even worse idea_


	9. [al, riza; bad idea au, pt. 2]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lieutenant’s right: it does look terribly uncomfortable, though warm fur is probably still an improvement over cold metal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continues directly from the previous chapter aka the Even Worse Idea, so read that first if you haven't already. same warnings apply.

“Edward’s going to get a bad crick in his neck, sleeping like that.”

Al looks from Lieutenant Hawkeye to his brother, who’d somehow fallen asleep (not before considerable yelling) with his face smushed against Al’s side. The lieutenant’s right: it does look terribly uncomfortable, though warm fur is probably still an improvement over cold metal. “It’ll give him something else to be angry about, at least.” 

The humour probably sounds as forced as it feels to him, but the lieutenant doesn’t call him out on it, only gives a glance of wry acknowledgement. “Is there anything I can do? I know neither of you have eaten.”

That’s the thing Al likes best about Lieutenant Hawkeye. She’s practical down to the bone, in a way that most people aren’t; she doesn’t ask _are you okay_ or _what do you need_ because the answers to that are nothing and everything anyway. 

She’d also been the one to see to Nina’s arrangements for the nights to come, securing one of the resting rooms that shift staff slept in and dispatching the colonel off find a family who could take Nina in until a more permanent decision was made. It’s something Al has decided he’d like to learn, perhaps, when he thinks about the person he wants to be after he becomes one again – a journey that now seems, however impossibly, even _longer_ than before.

(He does realise that he thinks about this stuff an unusual lot, for someone their age. Then again, for all that Brother would kick you in the face with the automail if you accused him of philosophy, he also spends almost every waking tackling alchemical theories that would make most researchers weep.

And Winry’s supposed to be the most normal of them all, but she’s at least twice as good at automail than any other mechanic they’ve seen despite being half their age if that, so. 

Whatever Al’s gonna be when he gets his body back, _normal_ has never really been part of the question and he’s fine with that.)

All that said, though… frankly speaking, Al doesn’t think he can eat anything right now without throwing it right back up, and he’s pretty sure that’s not just the still-unsettled biology speaking; the fact that his walking stomach of a brother hasn’t so much as grumbled about getting food ever since they left Tucker’s house suggests as much.

And there’s also the other half of it, that Al isn’t actually sure _how_ he’s going to eat in this body. The fact that he’d been able to walk right away suggests that a good portion of the canine muscle memory is intact; the fact that he can _also_ talk confirm that it’s more complicated than that. He’s going to need to eat at some point, even if he isn’t looking forward to it – not because of any pride on his own part (it’s honestly fairly hard to retain much of that, as a suit of armour with an apron) but because of what he thinks it might do to his brother.

Which makes this the best time for a small trial run, he supposes, when it’s just him and the lieutenant awake and remaining in the room. “Maybe just some water. In a bowl?”

Lieutenant Hawkeye nods briskly. “There should be a couple in the pantry, I’ll try to get one with a wide base. Anything else?”

“Well…” Al hesitates briefly, but reminds himself of the practicalities and forges ahead anyway. “About the incident reports–”

“All taken care of,” the lieutenant answers before Al can actually ask her to fabricate today’s events wholesale. “I’ll run through the details later once the colonel returns, for consistency’s sake, but the Fullmetal Alchemist arrived in time to stop Tucker and save Nina. You were never there, and two skilled State Alchemists will confirm that no human chimeras were made, whatever the MPs think they saw.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” he says with a rush of relief. 

Brother’s not going to be happy at all, that their cover story paints him as having succeeded where he actually hadn’t – but if there had ever been any risk of the wrong people taking notice of an improbably soul-bonded armour, the danger is only greater now. (Al’s scientifically curious about what his insides look like now, but if it involves more amoral research then he’s happy not knowing, thank you.)

Unfortunately, Al suspects what he’s going to ask next will piss his brother off even more. “When we were traveling, I remember seeing quite a few people with prosthetics – some were veterans, I think? – who had these dogs that were allowed to follow them everywhere, even into shops and restaurants.”

“You mean the service dog programme. Yes, that’d override even no-pet rules.” Lieutenant Hawkeye pins him with a look, the one usually everybody _else_ gets subjected to for dubious ideas. “Are you quite sure, Alphonse?”  


“Whatever fit Brother throws about it now, it’ll still be less than the property destruction later if anyone tries to stop me from following him,” Al reasons, and the humour this time is genuine, if also genuinely morbid. “Besides, I’m sure having not one but two automail limbs qualifies him for it.”  


“That it does,” the lieutenant allows. “I’ll get the paperwork started for your registration, then. Is that all?”

 _Yes,_ Al means to say except the sound gets lost in a jaw-cracking yawn, though that’s even less of a surprise than the realisation that he remembers how it is to feel physically tired once again.

Lieutenant Hawkeye rises from her desk and crosses to the door. “I’ll get you some water, and then you should get some rest too. These reports need to be finished, anyway, and the colonel certainly won’t be doing them,” she adds.

Ed might’ve told them at some point that Al literally can’t sleep in the armour, but Al’s certainly never even mentioned how keeping a solitary watch every night has become such habit that he barely can imagine it another way. Somehow the lieutenant knows anyway.

“I’ll try,” Al agrees, and the lieutenant gives him a small smile before she vanishes out the door.  


Beside him, Brother lets out a small sound of discontent as the door swings back closed again, and Al settles back down beside him again, waiting for help to return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what am i even doing at this point? i don't know and neither does al. hawkeye probably does tho
> 
> also this was supposed to be like, 500 words max
> 
>  **EDIT:** [some further thoughts on this verse](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/627335770189037568/any-more-planned-for-your-alchimera-fics-tha)


	10. [ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These days Ed’s journals are actual proper travelogues, no coded shit or anything.

These days Ed’s journals are actual proper travelogues, no coded shit or anything.

…okay, no, there’s still some coded shit because alchemy _is_ an inseparable part of travelling for him and that’s just too damn dangerous to leave out in plain sight. Especially since he can’t just transmute the covers shut anymore.

Besides, old habits are hard to break. Though at least he’s trained himself (with Winry’s enthusiastic “encouragement”) out of accidentally writing shopping lists and stuff in code too, just because half his mind’s still occupied with figuring out a transmutation or three dozen.

But anyway. Somehow he keeps finding that there’s _so much_ to write about these days whenever he arrives in a new place, or even when he visits those they’ve been in before.

(Fine, yes, probably that does say something about how much of a one-track mind he’d had, before – but getting his and Al’s bodies back had been _really fucking important_ , okay? 

That was putting it mildly, even, and he’d always consider it a worthy exchange even if it did make him wonder sometimes if there were other things he’d missed back then.)

He doesn’t mail out excitedly longwinded accounts of his journeys like Al does, complete with local recipes, pressed dried flowers, and photos or meticulously-labelled illustrations in place of them. Or that’s what he hears from Winry, at least – when Al sends _Ed_ letters it runs more along the lines of alchemical notes that are thoroughly annotated (and even more thoroughly coded), though sometimes dried flowers still find their way into the envelope because his brother is a ridiculous sensory-addicted dork and Ed loves him to pieces despite the constant risk of pollen allergy.

Luckily the flowers are usually flat enough to double as bookmarks for his journals, which is also a convenient way of marking the progress of his journey against Al’s. So there’s that.

Though letters between them don’t happen very often, what with how very _very_ frequently they change towns (or even countries) entirely.

He’s pretty sure there’s now an urban legend about that time Al’s letter had to be redirected a whole fifteen times before it reached him, and he’s _definitely certain_ the postal system of Amestris and beyond actively hates them both by now. 

(Which is seriously uncalled for, since Al _always_ puts more than enough postage to account for the inevitable redirections? But by this point Ed will personally vouch that people _everywhere_ can be unreasonable about the weirdest stuff. Turns out Amestris doesn’t have a monopoly on that. Possibly not even the biggest market share.)

And of course it’s almost always Al doing the sending. Contrary to what Mustang believes Ed _is_ actually capable of semi-tidy handwriting when he needs to be – how the hell else would he draw transmutation circles and not have them blow up in his face?

But one time Ed had just gotten so immediately carried away that he’d written his reply on whatever he’d had on hand right then, which amounted to three crumpled-then-flattened-again receipts, a map from the last town, and the back of the envelope that Al had sent his letter in.

(Al’s answering letter had come with five crisply-folded sheets of blank paper; Ed could practically hear the sigh coming from it.)

So now that they’ve acknowledged that letter-writing isn’t Ed’s strong point even when it’s about alchemy, and since Al’s all for being super-organised about everything – the resemblance to Hawkeye is _really_ starting to get terrifying – and makes plans in advance far more than Ed does (which is to say not at all), Al now includes also-coded lists of telephone numbers in his letters, along with the dates when he expects to be contactable at each place.

This way Al can continue taking however long he likes to compose each letter (and he definitely adds to them over different days, Ed can tell by the writing) while Ed can call right back to discuss seven different theories at once, and woe betide anyone who tries to bug their phone calls without at least a university library’s worth of theoretical alchemy to back it up.

It’s a great arrangement, and Ed _doesn’t have to write any letters_. His brother is a _genius._

The resounding success of this arrangement also reminds Ed that there are more ways to say _hi, still not dead!_ than just letters (because, once again: _impossible_ ), since so many people have insisted on expressing _completely unnecessary_ worry over his decision to travel alone.

(Hawkeye had only expressed an offer to teach him self-defence via firearm, and when he turned that down she’d instead produced a wallet of alarmingly convincing fake documents under a half-dozen not-Edward-Elric names. “Just in case,” she’d said, which still hadn’t explained why there’d been a pass from Xing proclaiming him to be a diplomat and thus immune to Amestrisan law.

Hawkeye is the best, hands down.)

For Winry he scribbles down the compositions of metal alloys and composites by region alongside rough sketches of interesting-looking designs, and most of the time he even remembers to record all this through an engineering lens rather than an alchemical one. He collects the scraps of notes and mails them once he’s gathered enough, which he usually does every few weeks, though he saves the actual material samples for when they meet in-person because they’re just too damned troublesome to mail. (He doesn’t really send anything separate for Granny Pinako, except for that one magazine clipping from Creta that had dedicated one full-page spread to Rockbell Automail’s advances, along with a hastily-done translation on the back.)

Mustang’s team gets the occasional joke souvenir; Ed knows that Breda and Havoc have a betting pool going (because of _course_ they do) on who can most accurately guess where he’ll go next, so he always makes sure to get things that aren’t obviously tied to any place, and addresses the parcels to Hawkeye directly because he trusts her to thoroughly destroy the postmarked evidence.

(During their last phone call Al had pretty much admitted to dropping red herrings about Ed’s plans in his letters back to the team, and Ed had laughed so hard he’d needed to sit down.)

But that’s pretty much the most regular of it – Al, Winry, and sowing chaos in Mustang’s office from afar – and no one’s complained yet, so Ed figures this is good enough. Maybe someday when they’re all back together again they can borrow some of his journals to read if they want to; he knows that Winry does enjoy reading about Al’s travels, and if nothing else Al will certainly have fun spotting which parts are actually about alchemy and cracking them. 

That’s still some time off anyway.

Right now, though, he’s got a new idea about that alkahestry fusion that Al had written about, and – how the hell do you even dial from Aerugo to Xing? 

Ed has no idea, but there’d better be a way or he’s gonna _make_ one, see if he doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this thing literally started as just the first sentence all isolated and alon in my brain, i have no idea how it turned 1k
> 
> hawkeye is the best 2k20


	11. [al, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s just tired, not about to collapse, and there’s a difference even if it’s a damned fine line that he walks these days. 

There’s something to be said for exhaustion; the bone-deep kind that burrows far under your skin, the kind that carves everything away until you’re left with a hollow shell and still comes back for some more. The kind that makes it impossible to dream, or at least impossible to remember them. 

Al looks at him with a faint furrow of worry between his eyebrows – and for a moment Ed has a moment of irrational panic that he’d somehow said that _out loud_ , but he’s just as sure that he hasn’t. 

He knows what he’s doing. He’s just tired, not about to collapse, and there’s a difference even if it’s a damned fine line that he walks these days. 

“–r. Brother?” Al’s still looking at him, and his expression makes it quite clear that he’s repeated himself quite a few times already. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Peachy.” Ed waves a hand, and stands to gather the books scattered on the library table between them. “Just stayed up too late figuring shit out last night, is all. I’ll check these out and meet you outside?”

“Sure,” Al says, already putting away notebooks and stationery in their respective bags, but his expression registers a beat later as very much like the one he directs at bedraggled stray cats left forlorn by the road, concerned and far-too-genuine, and Ed–

Ed can’t take that, not now. He runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #'hot mess' is kinda ed's default state of being and winning the promised day battle changes jackshit about that


	12. [al, ed; post-promised day crack]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (can’t have been the more socially-adjusted brother, obviously.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's more of a description than actual fic, but i like it enough to archive here anyway

> sometimes, after everything settles, people who’ve only heard of the elrics by legend (and make no mistake it _is_ legend, after the promised day) and know one of them used to be armour for some reason (the legends weren’t really specific) finally meet them…
> 
> …and decide that ed must’ve been the one in the armour. can’t have been the more socially-adjusted brother, obviously.
> 
> ed’s just like: “don’t be ridiculous this resting bitch face is all-natural”
> 
> (one time this happens at an Important Military Function they’re attending for Political Reasons, so instead of just smiling politely al actually says not-quite-under-his-breath _we promised we wouldn’t make a scene this evening, brother_.
> 
> to which ed retorts _that was you, **i** sure as hell didn’t promise mustang anything! _at a definitely-audible volume.
> 
> al goes back to smiling politely while chivvying ed back to the buffet table – _oh look, they’re refilling the food_ – and leaves confusion in their wake.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #the elrics' legend continues to intensify #are they (or at least al) (mostly al) doing it on purpose? #nobody knows #but certainly many have bets about it #hawkeye is abstaining from this nonsense


	13. [ed, winry, al; all-automail au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t,” Ed bites out, “know any damn alchemists.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> au where mustang never comes to resembool and the elrics forsake their alchemy altogether (after ed finds the will to exist again at least) and become automail experts too

“I don’t,” Ed bites out, “know any damn alchemists.”

The uninvited visitor has the bloody nerve to raise an eyebrow and point at the sharpened row of stabby earth jutting out at him. “And what would you call this, then?”

“Coincidence.” Ed spins the wrench in his hand menacingly. “Or just a natural tectonic reaction to your existence, who the hell cares. Now get _lost_ , or I’ll tell all our clients the military’s to blame for their automail being late!”

* * *

“I’m glad.” Winry perches on the table by the open window, kicking her legs idly as she waits for the soldering on her current work-in-progress to cool enough so that she can continue working on the wiring. “I know the whole giving up alchemy thing was Ed’s idea to start with, but I was…”

“Worried about how Brother would deal with it?” Al finishes when she trails off, though he doesn’t look up from his workbench (the exaggeratedly tall one that’s specifically _his_ , with oversized handles on all the tools so it’s more comfortable for him to handle – as opposed to the other two workbenches where Ed’s projects are always spilling over into Winry’s space and vice versa). “I think the automail work helps; Brother wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t have something to tinker with. The fact that it means he can design his own automail doesn’t hurt, either.”

“If by _design_ you mean _put stupidly edgy motifs all over it_ ,” Winry huffs, over the clank of armour that is Al’s shrug. “Does he really believe we still don’t know about those designs he’s been sketching with the integrated arrays, though?”

“I doubt it. Brother’s probably just worked himself up over how to bring the idea up with me, in case I see it as going back on our promise or something.” Al clearly doesn’t, from the tone of his voice, but – used to be they all knew that the only thing which might get Ed using his alchemy again ( _properly_ using it, not just in occasional bursts that none of them acknowledge aloud) would be for trying to get Al’s body back. 

If working on automail has changed that, has rewired enough of Ed’s super-twisted thought-pretzel into admitting the potential good alchemy – and _alchemists_ – can do, even if it ended in disaster for them once… Winry honestly couldn’t wish for anything better. Even if it eventually meant the automail field might lose Ed’s sheer talent to the pursuit of alchemy once again.

And, in the shorter term, even if it meant Ed would transmute everything three _gadzillion_ times edgier in a fraction of the time.

Maybe Al’s imagining the same thing, because there’s something very much like a muffled snicker. “It’d certainly explain why he’s been more cranky than usual, lately.”

Winry hops back off the desk, shaking her head. “Only you’d notice a difference, Al. Though he’d better figure that out soon – if I’m understanding them right, those redesigns could really help people, and we could use more of that.”

“Alchemist, be thou for the people,” Al answers, as if it hasn’t been years since either of them said that, and Winry will forever deny the nostalgia of it even as she gets back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> where did the rest of this come from? i haven't the faintest idea


	14. [ed; bad end(?) au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn’t even start until _after_ they arrive in Resembool. That’s the real kicker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *dials the meter back to angst*
> 
> not a happy fic. consider yourself warned

**i.**

It doesn’t even start until _after_ they arrive in Resembool. That’s the real kicker.

If Ed had known this was coming, maybe he wouldn’t even have come back at all. Or probably he would still have caved under Al’s mournful looks (unfair how his brother doesn’t even _need_ puppy eyes to cheat) but at least he would’ve been bloody _prepared_.

As it is, the first time it happens is enough to make him almost stumble, the vicious stab of a headache a wash of black-then-red behind his eyes.

When his vision clears he sees Al looking over in concern, even though Ed is quite sure he didn’t make a single sound.

“Brother? You okay?” Al’s hands are paused over the kitchen counter, halfway through making the third mug of hot cocoa. (Ed had called dibs on the first, Winry had claimed the second on the way back to the workshop, and Pinako’s dead and departed tastebuds only accept coffee dark enough to be indistinguishable from motor oil.)

“Just a spasm,” Ed says, waving it off, and at least the way his fingers have tightened reflexively on his own mug only makes it more convincing. “Stop worrying about everything, Al. Or do you really want wrinkles on your face when you just got it back?”

He can tell that Al doesn’t buy it, not entirely, but not enough to question him outright either. “At least I won’t have scowl lines like you. You _have_ been doing those exercises for your arm?”

“Duh. Having arm strength this mismatched is a bloody pain,” he retorts, and that one’s definitely true – the physical therapy isn’t exactly interesting, but Ed’s not planning to stop until he can pack a decent replacement for an automail punch. “And scowl lines _aren’t even a thing.”_

“Perhaps you’ll be the one to invent them, then,” Al says serenely as he turns back to his cocoa assembly line, and dammit, Ed can’t even scowl at his back without turning into a walking punchline.

* * *

**ii.**

Look, Ed knows that his pain tolerance is fucked up, okay. _You_ try having two limbs disintegrated and great hunks of metal practically welded onto the nerves – either you ended up with a massively-screwed pain scale, or you’d have lost your mind by the end of it.

That’s not Ed’s particular brand of crazy, so door number one it is, and Ed’s well-aware of it.

For all the damned good knowing does, either. It’s not like he can consciously undo years of desensitisation to constant pain and other assorted nuisances, but if the question is just about knowing then boy does he _ever_ , hooray!

(The question has occurred before to Ed: whether he can blame the always-fraying ends of his temper on the probably-true fact that _anyone_ would be cranky if their nerves were always in a lowkey state of being fried. But even if anyone bought the excuse they’d likely spend ten minutes crying over him first – or falling eerily silent with the implication of daggers, as Hawkeye sometimes does while carefully not-admitting that Ed had said something disturbing again.

So no thanks. Besides, Al and Winry would never buy it, since they know that all the automail did to his temper was to give him metal limbs to punch and/or kick with.)

What this all boils down to is the grim possibility that he could very well be _wrong_ about when the symptoms started; maybe Resembool had just been when it started getting _noticeable._

By his standards.

That’s hardly fucking reassuring, as Al would put it, minus the expletives. As if sudden head-splitting migraines without any apparent cause could ever be good news in any way.

And clearly Truth can’t be the only god that Ed’s pissed off just by continuing to exist, because it gets worse.

One morning he wakes up, and only doesn’t fall flat onto the floor because he doesn’t even try to get up. Everything feels weak – paralysis-weak, worse than even his arm had felt right after the Gate had spit it out – and Ed lies there in gasping silence until enough strength reasserts itself that he can manage stumbling out of bed with one hand against the wall. 

Another afternoon he coughs so hard he doubles over, until the air feels like it’s been sucked out of the world and there’s the faintest metallic tang at the back of his throat.

(He spends the rest of the first day treading too-lightly around the black spots flickering across his vision, and actually sits down to read for once instead of pacing within grabbing reach of the bookshelf, just so Winry or Granny won’t notice the difference and think there’s something wrong with his automail.

He spends the second one wondering if he should go back to wearing red again, just so the blood won’t show up so easily.) 

* * *

**iii.**

The headaches are still the worst of it, though. 

They’re noticeably more severe on some days than the others, and if there’s any underlying pattern he hasn’t found it yet, but this much is clear overall: so far, they’re only getting worse.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean jackshit about what’s to come. Ed’s a scientist, he _knows_ better than to theorise on incomplete data, and yet some part of him still dreads the day when they get so bad it’ll hurt too much to open his eyes.

And just – fuck that, okay? Ed didn’t go through hell to get Al’s body back just so that a bunch of stupid misfiring nerves could stop him from drinking in the sight that is his brother.

Never mind that these days he can’t exactly look Al in the eye and say that he’s alright; Ed’s always been a shit liar when it counts.

He’s not entirely shit at planning ahead, though, and he knows that the Rockbells have always kept a supply of decent-strength painkillers around the house for the more uncomfortable procedures.

Usually he’d conclude that their clients were wimps if they needed painkillers for things not even approaching automail surgery and leave it at that – but right now what it means is that there’s a ready supply waiting for him, behind a lock that’s far too easy for him to pick even without alchemy. 

And so long as he takes only one or two at a time, to save for when he might need them in the future, who’s going to notice?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's at least a bit more to this but it refuses to go from head to keyboard so have this


	15. [maes, roy; ishval]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy grimaces. “I’d rather risk caffeine withdrawal than suffer that swill they call coffee, thank you.”

Maes is almost finished with his drink when Roy sticks a hand out towards him.

“What, this?” Maes raises an eyebrow and sloshes his near-empty cup pointedly. “Should’ve come with me to the mess tent if you wanted some, Major Mustang.”

Roy grimaces. “I’d rather risk caffeine withdrawal than suffer that swill they call coffee, thank you. And no,” he adds before Maes can even interrupt, “I wasn’t about to ask for Gracia’s photos either.”

Maes pouts – and really, Roy deserves the silent treatment for that. But he so rarely _asks_ for anything, and for Maes curiosity is its own gravity, as Gracia so poetically (and beautifully, and graciously!) put it once. “What then?”

Roy heaves a terribly put-upon sigh. “Your glasses, obviously. They’re one light tap away from cracking entirely, and I can assure you, whatever tape everyone pretended not to see you ‘borrowing’ from the supplies tent won’t hold for long in this temperature.”

“And how are y–”

Roy raises a gloved hand along with an eyebrow.

Maes huffs a reluctant laugh; the sound is almost foreign to his own ears. He of all people should know better than to believe that Roy’s only got the one talent, even if here it’s more along the lines of snapped destruction rather than looking at women the right way, but in Maes’ own defence they’ve all been here too long. “Right. Forget I asked.”

“So I shall,” Roy answers with pompous magnanimity, because his other talent is being a lovable asshole. “If only because tripping and falling on one of your own knives because your glasses broke mid-fight would be a truly ignominious way to go.”

Maes checks their surroundings one last time for any potential problems before taking his glasses off. He’s not exactly _blind_ without the glasses, but this is effectively still enemy territory, and from experience Roy has a tendency to be lost to the world whenever he’s doing any transmutation besides flame alchemy. 

From the amused tilt to Roy’s expression he’s obviously noticed the threat sweep, but Maes pretty much dares him to say anything with a look as he hands the glasses over. “If you break them I _will_ have you make me a new pair, you know.”

Roy gestures expansively at their surroundings. “We’re in sand country, in case you haven’t noticed. Glass is hardly a problem.”

“If you say so,” Maes replies just to be contrary, but Roy’s already pulling out a suspiciously-nice set of pen and paper obtained from who-knows-where (probably sweet-talked off some secretary, by Maes’ guess) and his returning eyeroll is half-abstracted.

Alas, much as Maes usually enjoys watching Roy work, he can’t keep more than half an eye on it given their surroundings, and before he knows it the sound of sure penstrokes has given way to the half-familiar crackle of alchemy.

At least the transmutation light isn’t bright enough to attract attention in a desert like this. 

Roy’s already holding the glasses back out when Maes turns around, and Maes doesn’t need to bring it any closer to be confident that the repaired lenses look good as new.

And _then_ Roy says, crossly, “Stop squinting and put them on, Hughes, I need you to check if things still look clear. Refraction’s always tricky when it comes to reconstructing crystal structures.”

Maes makes a strangled sound when his brain parses that back to regular-people speak. “You’re telling me that you could’ve _ruined my glasses?_ And you didn’t warn me before deciding to fix them?”

“Please. I’m no optometrist, but if I weren’t capable of correctly identifying and reconstructing this much of a material’s structure I might as well give up being an alchemist too,” Roy says dryly, and when Maes puts the glasses back on he can see the flat stare very clearly, but all he can think about is how long it’s been since he’s heard Roy refer to himself as _an alchemist_ and not mean _the Flame Alchemist._

Probably since they first got their deployment orders to Ishval.

They really _have_ been here too long, Maes thinks, but all the same he gives Roy a thumbs up anyway. “Perfectly done, Major Mustang!”

Roy stows the pen and paper back away and stands, somehow managing to still look dignified despite the sand dotting his uniform blue. “I’d thank you not to talk about my alchemy like the steaks from that place you like in Central, Hughes,” he snipes back, but the fondness in his smirk gives him away.

(He’ll have to do better than that, if he truly intends to enter the high-stakes game that is Amestrisan politics, but Maes decides not to point it out, for now.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #literally inspired by one frame from that chapter #with hughes in ishval holding a mug and a crack-ish through one lens #because that's how my brain works apparently


	16. [ed; 57 words]

> “Don’t be ridiculous, me and Al have been taking trains up and down all of Amestris for _years_ now, of course I know these aren’t the most efficient routes! It’s just– dammit, look, the trains are pretty much the only place I can catch some sleep these days without scaring myself awake with nightmares, okay? Happy now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #this has no context even inside my brain


	17. [ed, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed seriously considers dyeing his hair more than once, in the After.
> 
> (It _is_ the kind of after that deserves the capitals, okay – he’s not being over-dramatic, shut up Al.)

Ed seriously considers dyeing his hair more than once, in the After.

(It _is_ the kind of after that deserves the capitals, okay – he’s not being over-dramatic, shut up Al.)

Anyway. It probably says something about him, that he’s only started thinking about it now instead of much earlier when it’d been one of the identifying features of Wanted Criminal Edward Elric: _short, temper, golden hair._

Speaking of which, he hasn’t gotten around to beating up whoever wrote that description.

He’ll ask Hawkeye the next time he’s in Central; she’ll know who it was. Hawkeye knows everything.

* * *

When he finally gets around to asking, Ed expects one of maybe three outcomes: either it’ll turn out that Mustang wrote it, or Bradley and his crap sense of ha-ha-Fullmetal-geddit humour did, _or_ Hawkeye will reveal the next person Ed needs to exact revenge upon.

What he _isn’t_ expecting is for Hawkeye to say, “Oh, that was me.”

Ed’s brain makes a jagged _brrrrzt?_ sound like his automail sometimes does when the moving parts get bent out of shape, because that made… absolutely no sense, Hawkeye knows him better than that.

Knows him well enough, actually, to answer what would’ve been his next question or so if his brain hadn’t still been stuck in error-noise-loop mode. “I didn’t write it for that specific occasion, obviously, but should a military personnel be wanted for whatever reason, protocol requires their CO to provide the pertinent details to aid in the search. It seems only prudent–” Hawkeye draws out a thin manila folder from the shelf behind her, “–to prepare such crucial intel beforehand, don’t you agree?” 

“You had a bunch of descriptions written up for the whole team,” Ed repeats dumbly, but even as he says it he realises he _does_ have some idea of where this is going. “Descriptions that happen to mostly be stuff which any of us could easily disguise?”

“Surely not, I assure you that these are all _quite_ accurate,” Hawkeye says, entirely deadpan. “After all, the colonel saw fit to use your description directly instead of writing one afresh.”

“Of course he did,” Ed mutters with a roll of his eyes, but he also can’t help looking at the file with what Al would call _unholy glee_. “Can I see everyone else’s?”


	18. [winry, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bundle in Ed’s hands is folded tight, a nondescript square, but still Winry only needs a glimpse of red to know what it _must_ be, even if she’s never seen it before (or not this particular one at least).

When he’d called out to her at the train station, said _there’s something I gotta give you, just – hang on_ , Winry had never expected this.

The bundle in Ed’s hands is folded tight, a nondescript square, but still Winry only needs a glimpse of red to know what it _must_ be, even if she’s never seen it before (or not this particular one at least).

“It’s just my old cloak,” Ed says like it’s nothing. Like he doesn’t know that _she_ knows it has to be the last cloak he transmuted right before the Promised Day happened and everything changed again. “I know you’re gonna go out there and do important things, _amazing_ things, and anyone who doesn’t realise that is an idiot anyway, but… just be careful, okay?”

Probably anyone else would’ve added _don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,_ but that’s not something any of them have ever said for quite obvious reasons.

Winry can’t help the wicked grin anyway. “I dunno, do you think it might be a bit short on me?”

“ _Don’t you even start,_ ” Ed squawks, shoving the folded cloth into her hands. “I’d give you the watch except I still haven’t gotten Colonel Hardhead to fix the dent he made last time I threw it at him, and you have too many wrenches anyway. Besides, you know how to forge my signature as well as Al does, if it comes to that.”

“Your chickenscratch squiggle, you mean?” she asks rhetorically, and (miracle of miracles) he acknowledges that with a roll of his eyes before she pulls him into a hug anyway. “Thanks, Ed.”


	19. [winry; rush valley]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rush Valley talks. Winry listens.

Rush Valley chatters and gossips about the Fullmetal Alchemist, in a way Resembool (or even East City the few times she’d visited it) hadn’t.

Rush Valley talks. Winry listens.

Not intentionally, at least not at first, but there’s only so many ways people can occupy themselves while waiting for their measurements to be taken or their port to be adjusted.

In a way that’s not much different to things back in Resembool, except that instead of flock problems and this year’s harvest the talk is more about automail, automail, and – you guessed it, automail!

Winry has no problem with this; she has the exact _opposite_ of a problem with this, since it’d also meant that she joined in on conversations far more easily than she might’ve otherwise had in a completely foreign place, but she also wonders if that’s part of the reason for the general fascination with Ed.

Because Rush Valley doesn’t care for alchemy, but it’s pretty much a public secret that the Fullmetal Alchemist has automail, even if people can never agree if it’s his arm or leg.

Both, some of the people who’d been around when they… _inspected_ … Ed’s automail during their first visit would answer, but from what Winry has seen it’s quite often met with scepticism. Even in Rush Valley, mecca of automail, it’s rare to see someone with more than one complete limb replacement.

(Paninya tosses her head back with a laugh when they get to talking about it one slow afternoon. “Maybe you should put that up somewhere: _Winry Rockbell, official automail mechanic of the Fullmetal Alchemist!_ ”

“Bit long for a signboard, I think,” Winry says, but she can’t help giggling at the mental image anyway.)


	20. [al, winry, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much as Al loves his brother to itty-bitty-and-very-shouty pieces, sometimes – more often than sometimes, really – the best thing to do in any situation is the opposite of whatever he would’ve done.

After he stops semi-randomly collapsing of physical exhaustion from what is effectively years of constant wakefulness (which happens more than he or Ed would like, in those first few weeks and months), Al finds that he’s kind of… forgotten how to sleep.

Logically, he _knows_ that can’t be true; he hasn’t needed to breathe for just as many years either but his lungs are quite very insistent about needing oxygen, and sleep is just about as much an essential biological function as breathing is.

So it shouldn’t be any different, and yet somehow it _is_.

Anyway. Irrational as the problem itself may be, Al firmly believes in the application of logic to all things (followed by alchemy, wit and charm, cheating, and finally brute force in that order).

And much as Al loves his brother to itty-bitty-and-very-shouty pieces, sometimes – more often than sometimes, really – the best thing to do in any situation is the opposite of whatever he would’ve done.

So he thinks to himself _what would Brother do?_ , to which the answer is barely even hypothetical: sulk over it all by himself and not tell anyone.

Well. That’s his preliminary approach settled, then.

Thanks, logic.

* * *

Winry mulls over it for a couple moments before her eyes brighten. “You know where Granny keeps the nice cocoa, right? Go make enough for all of us, I’ve got an idea.”

Al figures he’ll know soon enough anyway, so he trots off to the kitchen to make three mugs of cocoa as instructed (out of a can that’s clearly labelled as tea, because Granny is of the opinion that there’s some things Ed cannot be trusted with, and apparently this is one of them).

He’s about done heating up the milk when he hears his brother yell _Where the hell are you going with my bedding!?_ followed by Winry’s answering holler of _Won’t find out if you don’t keep up!_ accompanied by Den barking counterpoint. 

_Clomp-clomp-grumble-clomp-woof_ goes their progress back into the living room, though luckily Ed lets up on the clomping before Granny can start scolding him about walking too hard on the automail again, and by the time Al re-emerges with three steaming mugs (cinnamon on his, peanut butter in both of the others), there’s…

Al tilts his head and squints.

…what appears to be the beginnings of a blanket fort in the middle of all the pushed-back furniture? Albeit with the muffled sound of bickering from under the half-collapsed cloth roof that’s not anywhere near tall enough.

Then again, the last time they did this was… long enough that Al can’t even remember when it was, but definitely way before the armour.

Needless to say they’ve all grown taller since then (and how happy Ed would be to hear him say that) so Al can’t exactly blame them for the mess.

…he will, however, blame them if the cocoa gets cold, so Al sets the mugs down safely out of the way of any flailing blankets, and tries to figure out the optimal number of chairs he can transmute taller to prop up the fort without Granny turning her wrench on him tomorrow morning.

(It turns out the answer is just two instead of the three he’d been thinking, because Winry’s a better engineer than both of them put together. 

Ed’s convinced that it can be done with just one, though, and Al’s still listening to them leaning over him to argue it out when he falls asleep.)


	21. [al; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time someone mistakes Al for the Fullmetal Alchemist (at least after he’s out of the armour), it honestly takes him a few moments to realise what’s happening.

The first time someone mistakes Al for the Fullmetal Alchemist (at least after he’s out of the armour), it honestly takes him a few moments to realise what’s happening.

They’re in a town which neither of them have been in before, which is probably a large part of why it happens at all, because for all the alchemy he’d done in the town’s square earlier Al hasn’t actually introduced himself by name or anything.

Which is why he’s confused when the proprietor of the place they’re getting a late lunch at comes up to their table with dessert that they hadn’t ordered.

“On the house,” she says with a wink in response to his questioning look. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone – you’re traveling incognito or something, right, mister alchemist? – but I knew who you had to be right away. My sister was in Central that day, y'see, she told me all about what you did!”

Al gapes as the pieces fall into place, and two thoughts cross his mind at once: that the Promised Day really had been unmistakeable even for those who couldn’t have understood what was happening, and that it’s going to be _really awkward_ if he tries to turn her down now.

Not that she’d necessarily even believe him if he tries correcting her now, Al is thinking when someone – probably Zampano – kicks him under the table.

Al gives them both a flat look anyway, because that’d been unnecessary even if there wasn’t exactly a military handsign for _don’t turn down free desert you moron_ , before turning back to smile earnestly up at the proprietor. “Thank you, ma'am. I hope she’s doing alright as well?”

“Oh, just fine, she called to tell me all about the excitement afterwards! I bet she’s going to be jealous when I tell her I met you right here, in my shop…”

At which point she trails off, clearly realising the contradiction between this and being incognito, but Al gives in to the inevitable (it _does_ look like very good dessert, after all). “I don’t mind, you can tell her after I leave town.”

“Well then! Enjoy the dessert, boys,” she says cheerfully before bustling off again as they dig in.

(It does turn out to be excellent dessert. Al makes a mental note to write about it in his next letter to Brother.)


	22. [al; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing is, Al _gets_ it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> loose continuation to the previous bit, aka the one where al gets mistaken as the fullmetal alchemist

For all that it seems downright ludicrous to anyone who knows them, that he and Brother could be mistaken for each other –

– the thing is, Al _gets_ it. 

Amestrisan blonde and Xerxersian gold aren’t really that different in the grander scale of things, not when you’re comparing to Xingese black or Ishvalan white. 

As far as he can tell the real difference is this: most people in Amestris are _used_ to seeing those shades, albeit to varying extents depending on which border you live closer to. So it doesn’t register as peculiar even when they notice something, or the military would’ve known about Scar being Ishvalan much earlier on.

But Xerxes? With the way it had predated Amestris’ entire existence, and how instantaneously it had been eradicated… it’s just about certain that there _isn’t_ anyone else alive in Amestris with Xerxersian blood besides the two of them, not like the way you can walk through any sufficiently-large community and spot telltale signs of Cretan features, of Drachman ancestry.

(Though thinking about that reminds him of what he’d heard from Ed, about the founding of modern alkahestry and what had predated it. If Xing had already been established as a country before Xerxes’ fall – did that mean there might possibly be people of Xerxersian descent in Xing, even now?

It’s a slim-to-nothing chance, but still something worth looking into, Al decides.)


	23. [riza, al; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Brother told me that you told him about Ishval,” Alphonse says when she visits him at the hospital late one afternoon, after yet another extended PT session.

“Brother told me that you told him about Ishval,” Alphonse says when she visits him at the hospital late one afternoon, after yet another extended PT session.

This isn’t the first time she’s dropped by to see him; far from it, actually. The entire team’s practically made a game of seeing who can most easily reroute their day’s tasks to _conveniently_ pass by Central’s hospital, and she would’ve scolded them all soundly for it if she hadn’t been able to beat them all hands down.

But it _is_ the first time she’s come alone, which Riza supposes is the entire reason why he’s asking now.

In answer she gives a silent nod: acknowledgement and offer both. She hadn’t enjoyed going over it the first time, but she would do it again if he asked, because the Elrics among all people deserve that much.

Yet she doesn’t feel like that _is_ what Alphonse means to ask about, and she’s proven right when he slows the wheelchair to a stop beside one of the quieter benches in the hospital’s garden.

Riza obligingly takes the proffered seat. It’s shaded from the afternoon sun by a towering tree, because Alphonse is considerate in ways that Edward doesn’t care to be, and it puts her on level with him, because for all their differences the brothers are identical in their dislike of not being treated as an equal.

“I wanted to ask you about after. About coming back,” he begins, and the words are halting but still certain as always.

When Riza nods again it’s in a listening silence; he’s not done, she can tell.

“I get these– I don’t think nightmares are even the correct term for them. Dreams, maybe.” He leans forward in his chair, looks at her from a body that had spent years not in an enemy zone but another plane altogether (or perhaps both), and asks, “How do you leave a place behind when it won’t even leave you alone?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i just want al to be happy  
> also me: *writes this*


	24. [roy, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed’s hackles rise almost visibly at the words. “Well I’m _sorry_ we can’t all be _vapidly cheerful_ all the time, Colonel Sunshine.”

It’s an honest observation – as honest as he can ever get, at least, and Roy’s pretty certain that Hawkeye and the rest of his team would objectively agree with him.

But still the fact remains that he would _not_ have said it aloud if he hadn’t been distracted with the impossibility of negotiating peace deals with countries that are still inclined to treat him as a human weapon.

“You seem down lately, Fullmetal.”

Ed’s hackles rise almost visibly at the words. “Well I’m _sorry_ we can’t all be _vapidly cheerful_ all the time, Colonel Sunshine.”

Roy blinks, wrenching his train of thought off its rails far enough to actually process what he’s just heard. Because contrary to what common sense might dictate, the sign of Fullmetal being really off his game is not when he strikes out; it’s when his blows don’t even land anywhere close to mark. 

And that remark definitely had been wide. They both know that Roy doesn’t bristle at being accused of his demeanour, no more than Ed himself would (usually) take exception to getting told he has a short temper, and it throws _him_ off his game hard enough that he has trouble formulating an answer for long moments. 

“I didn’t mean that like… however it was that you interpreted it,” Roy finally says, setting down the papers he hasn’t been reading for a full minute. “It was a statement of fact. Is there something troubling you?”

“Other than everything _and_ this damned weather, you mean?” Ed snaps right back, but the harshness in his posture only stays for a breath longer before half-dissolving again. “Leave it, Colonel. It’s just one of those days, nothing you can do about it.”

That admittedly covers… far more things than he’d like it to, really, but Roy nods in acceptance, gaze falling back down to the stack off to one side of his desk. “I’ve got a bunch of documents here that need shredding, if you feel like being helpful at any point.”

“How convenient,” Ed grumbles, and continues smushing his entire being into the office couch for a while longer before peeling off it to shuffle over to Roy’s desk. “Confidential, are these?”

“Very,” Roy says, mostly serious. “I’d usually have disposed of them right away, but as you can imagine I’m not fond of raising the ambient temperature right now.”

Ed scoffs, already flipping through the stack until he finds one with enough empty space to scribble an array on. “Uncreative git. Give me that terrible pen of yours, I’m gonna make a wastebasket that’ll turn your documents to _dust_ and let Hawkeye patent the design _._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #ed: fire isn't the solution to everything you dumbass #roy: look who's talking oh it's mr. explosions himself #anyway i am grumpy and ed will have to suffer for it


	25. [riza; au]

> In another world, she is never named the Hawk’s Eye; she is a good sniper, not an excellent one, and is deemed better used in the back tents far down the command line – used not on the messy forefront of war but on the even messier logistics of it.
> 
> In another world, Riza does not meet him again until after Ishval is ended and Roy is being celebrated as the hero of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's literally all there was to this thought i just wanted to write it down somewhere


	26. [riza, roy; pre-reassignment]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Somehow I doubt your place is much better, sir.”

“ _Colonel?_ What are you doing here?”

“Fullmetal called me earlier, after he got back to the hotel – he said he’d dropped by to return the gun? I know you’ve said that you don’t have your place in order yet, but I didn’t realise that meant you hadn’t unpacked at all.”

“Somehow I doubt your place is much better, sir.”

“Maybe, but _I’m_ not the one who nags on about housekeeping in the office, so…”

“If there’s an explanation somewhere in there for you being here, I’m not seeing it.”

“Trust me, the rest would’ve come along if they weren’t busy preparing for the reassignment. At this rate they’ll all be packed _and_ unpacked before you are, Lieutenant. I’ve been to your flat in East, I know where you put your things; let me help you.”

“Is that an order, Colonel?”

“Maybe. I’m still your commanding officer until tomorrow comes, don’t forget.”


	27. [roy, elrics; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All that psychic stuff is nonsense anyway, but would it be the most impossible thing to have happened to the Elrics? Not even close.

Roy is aware that the Elric brothers can’t actually _be_ telepathic. (All that psychic stuff is nonsense anyway, but would it be the most impossible thing to have happened to the Elrics? Not even close.)

Sometimes, though, common sense gets discarded out the window by brute force long enough to make him wonder.

And the thing is, most of these sanity-suspending moments happen way _after_ the Promised Day, when the Elrics resume being semi-regular presences in their lives again instead of making like far-off-but-still-ominous thunder in the direction of Resembool.

Logically one might’ve expected it to be the opposite, that the thought should’ve darkened his mental doorstep much more when Fullmetal had been under his command (if not complying to it in the least). And it’s true that the Elrics _had_ been alarmingly in-sync even back then, but there’d been the constant proximity to chalk it up to; Roy has it on good authority (so not Havoc’s) that he and Hawkeye give off something of the same effect.

But now that his office is acting as some kind of mail-drop and call-forwarding centre between the Elrics as they frolic around in opposite ends of the country and beyond on some kind of alchemical discovery mission, Roy can confidently say that the level of their synchrony has kicked up several hundred notches to downright eerie.

(Also he is _definitely_ going to tell them to stop that – the carrier pigeon treatment, that is – the next time he manages to get both brothers in one room for more than five damn minutes without something actively blowing up around them.

It’s not happened so far, but the universe _has_ to stop hating him at some point. He’s earned that much, at least.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god imagine if truth had given the elrics telepathy at the gate just to screw with them


	28. [ed, al; at briggs]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t believe he _didn’t tell us,_ ” Ed growls, and it’s not at all an exaggeration because everything Armstrong-the-scarier had told him to shove aside earlier comes roaring back with a vengeance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for context, this follows that moment when ed and al find out about the riots in liore, during the briggs underground tunnel chat

Ed’s the one who brings it up afterwards, while Falman is finishing up the wiring between the hidden microphone and the receiver (a skillset he’d picked up from Fuery, Ed assumes). “Guess that’s another thing to deck the Colonel over the next time we see him.”

Al, because he is the bestest brother ever and may actually be telepathic, catches on right away. “Liore, you mean?”

“I can’t believe he _didn’t tell us,_ ” Ed growls, and it’s not at all an exaggeration because everything Armstrong-the-scarier had told him to shove aside earlier comes roaring back with a vengeance. 

Mustang _had_ to have known that the chance of Ed and Al learning about what happened was little to none. Probably they would’ve heard about it if they had stayed around East Command long enough, but they never did, and neither of them have ever been in the habit of keeping up with the news. (Besides, papers in Amestris rarely publish news from outside the immediate region – which also would happen to be _awfully_ convenient when you were trying to make sure no one noticed a nationwide conspiracy, Ed thinks darkly now.)

And yet he hadn’t said a word to them. Left them ignorant of this truth, thinking that everything had been solved happily ever after in Liore.

Ed balls his hands into fists, ignoring the lingering twinge in his shoulder from the frostbite yesterday. It’s Hughes all over again, except both better and infinitely worse; he feels simultaneously sick at his own relief that they hadn’t really known anyone in Liore anyway, and at the tally of deaths he _knows_ with an alchemist’s certainty must have happened for it to become a viable point on the transmutation circle. 

(He’s not religious at all, far opposite of it, but all the same Ed hopes to chance, to whoever might be listening – dammit, he’ll even take Truth if it comes to it – that Rose, at least, is okay.)

Al tuts – actually _tuts_ at Ed and prods at him until he uncurls his right hand at least. And Al’s right, Ed really can’t afford to put any unnecessary strain on the automail especially since he hasn’t exactly had the luxury to inspect what kind of merry hell the biting cold had wrought on it, but also between the stray kittens and the tutting Ed is halfway worried that Al is turning into some old cat lady. “Do you think it would’ve been better if we’d never revealed the truth about Father Cornello?”

Only Al would still refer to someone like that with that title, Ed thinks.

Luckily, he knows the answer to this one.

“I don’t think we could’ve ever left Liore without exposing that asshole for what he was,” Ed says frankly. Alchemists are bound to pursue the truth; even with everything else that’s been upended this is still something Ed believes with every fibre of his being. “And I even followed proper procedure for once, calling it in to Command immediately and everything.”

That’s another thing that chafes even as Al agrees with him; he’d reported it instead of trying to handle everything himself, like everyone had been telling him to do for ages, but none of them had been expecting that the _military_ itself would be the one to send it all to hell in a handbasket.

And this had still been nothing, compared to Ishval.

No fucking wonder Mustang wants so badly to tear it all to the ground, Ed thinks with a grimace, but all the understanding in the world _isn’t_ going to stop him from yelling at the colonel about this once the world stops falling apart around them.


	29. [roy, grumman; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next bill that he puts forward, after all the ones needed for Ishval’s reconstruction, is this: to set a minimum age limit on all candidates for the State Alchemist exam.

The next bill that he puts forward, after all the ones needed for Ishval’s reconstruction, is this: to set a minimum age limit on all candidates for the State Alchemist exam.

Fuhrer Grumman chuckles when Roy informs him of this in advance of the next council meeting. “I daresay some are going to find this quite funny, seeing as you _were_ the one to recruit young Edward and all.”

Roy considers warning him that Fullmetal, however retired he may be, has a healthy dislike of being called young _anything_ along with a track record of physical assault on both elderly men and Fuhrers.

“I’d argue that it puts me in a unique position to judge the necessity of this policy,” he says blithely instead, and that’s definitely a grin under the old fox’s moustache; probably something about that lesson on picking your battles that Grumman has been trying to drill into Roy’s thick skull for years now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there was uh. supposed to be more to this when it existed in my brain but i forgot what it was


	30. [roy, elrics; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Elrics make transmuting without circles look easy. 
> 
> It really, _really_ isn’t.

The Elrics make transmuting without circles look easy. 

It really, _really_ isn’t.

Roy of all people should’ve known better, because Ed had made passing the State Alchemist at twelve look easy too, and Roy himself has an entire book of strategies built around making people buy into the whole cheerful idiot persona. 

And he likes to think that he _does_ know better on most fronts; he doesn’t buy into most of the bullshit Ed sells (which is an entire bazaar’s worth) even if he sometimes acts like he does for the sake of his blood pressure. 

But on some level Roy truly hadn’t expected transmuting without circles to be _difficult_ , albeit with the terrible prerequisite of the entire blood toll thing. 

Perhaps it’s because Ed’s been able to transmute without circles for the entire time they’ve known each other, and the limitations on fine motor skills with the armour (which was fine for writing but not so much circles where every angle and symbol were critical) meant that he hadn’t really seen Al do that much alchemy before he’d been able to go without circles as well. Perhaps he would’ve thought very differently if he’d seen them before that very first attempt at human transmutation, though Roy has no doubt that they’d been terrifyingly skilled enough to make _regular_ alchemy look like literal child’s play.

Either way, it’s a good thing that the final stages of the Promised Day had mostly called for… crude work, for the lack of a better descriptor, even though the thought alone already makes Roy half-expect his office door to be kicked in at any moment. Thick walls and massive gouts of fire are one thing, but Roy’s not certain at all that he could’ve managed any more delicate transmutations, let alone the pinpoint accuracy of his usual flame alchemy.

The Gate had given knowledge, not understanding, and sure as hell _not_ the ability to immediately apply any of it. 

And yet (at least by his reckoning, because even now the Elrics have never discussed of that day in any detail) Ed _must_ have done the transmutation to bind Al’s soul right after coming back from the Gate for the first time.

Clapped and _succeeded_ in stable soul alchemy, with only the most basic of circles inscribed onto the armour, and the certainty that his brother would be lost to him forever if he didn’t manage it on the first try.

…anything else would’ve seemed easy after that, Roy supposes.

* * *

(On the other hand – and he’d already guessed this from seeing Al transmute – the overdramatic clapping is _not_ necessary at all. The only thing that’s absolutely required is the closing of a circle, which is fortunate; Roy’s already had these hands stabbed through once, the last thing he needs is to wear them out further by clapping loud enough to wake half the country like Ed always had.)


	31. [riza, ed, al; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even between the Rockbells’ engineering genius and Edward’s own alchemy, Riza is well-aware of the very real limits it imposes, hard as that might have been to imagine when he’d been swinging it around in a giant fuck-off blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, chanting: RIZA! RIZA! RIZA! R

The problem, if Riza is to put it into words (something she is admittedly very good at, if only via far too much practice of turning localised disasters into report-palatable verbiage) is not that Edward doesn’t know his limits.

Because he _does_. Riza has seen plenty of officers who overestimate their reach or underestimate their range, and Edward isn’t one of them.

Some of it might be the natural effect of the level and intensity at which he engages in alchemy, albeit in theory instead of practice now. Riza knows enough to understand that all arrays have a breaking point that cannot be exceeded regardless of skill, and just because Edward tends to have the impact of a very large hammer doesn’t mean he can’t be a scalpel when the situation calls for it; it’s all about knowing where the edge lies.

Personally, Riza’s inclined to believe that it’s mainly the automail. Even between the Rockbells’ engineering genius and Edward’s own alchemy, Riza is well-aware of the very real limits it imposes, hard as that might have been to imagine when he’d been swinging it around in a giant fuck-off blade.

(She’s truly glad that Edward’s down to just the leg now, and he’d laughed his head off when she presented him with a set of throwing knives modelled on said blade as a temporary-farewell-and-PT-reminder present. A win-win situation, as far as she’s concerned.)

So no, the issue isn’t a lack of limits; it’s _where_ they’re drawn.

Because Edward never considers himself out of the game as long as he can still get up to fight, and given that she _has_ personally witnessed him doing that while running nothing but spite, the fumes of weeks-long sleep deprivation, and ration bars he’d mostly enforced on Alphonse… well. 

It leads to situations like this, is the thing, with the two most capable consultants in all of Amestris piled up on her office couch like some kind of genius sandwich while arguing.

“I’ve got Brother right here, Lieutenant Colonel!” Alphonse had called out before she’d even rounded the corner into the room (a handy benefit of all the qi things he’s been learning, Riza gathers) accompanied by a vaguely-muffled holler: “What did I do, I didn’t even land my sorry ass in the infirmary this t– not _you_ too! Gerroff me!”

 _Good dog,_ Riza nods approvingly at Black Hayate when she enters the room to find him firmly seated alongside Alphonse, solidly pinning Edward to the couch.

“You know very well what you did. I told you to stay put, _not_ run into actively collapsing buildings with your automail already on the fritz,” Alphonse says patiently, completely unbothered by the rude noise Edward makes into the couch cushions, because they all know that Edward knows that _they_ know he has sufficient bodily strength to throw Alphonse off if he wanted to.

Really, Riza’s not at fault for taking shameless advantage of the fact that Edward would never do that to his brother; it’s for his own good, and also conveniently pins him in one place for Riza to focus her most scary look on until he cracks.

(Two minutes and forty-seven seconds is the longest he’s gone so far, but Riza’s not worried about him breaking the record – she has a _lot_ of scary looks.)


	32. [al, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al completely botches the first dozen or so transmutations he does after getting his body back by grossly overpowering them. 
> 
> Nowhere near botched enough for a rebound, of course, and by the third go he’s already getting the hang of the adjustments he needs to make. But they haven’t gotten where they are today by not having high standards, especially when Al _knows_ he can do better.

Al completely botches the first dozen or so transmutations he does after getting his body back by grossly overpowering them. 

Nowhere near botched enough for a rebound, of course, and by the third go he’s already getting the hang of the adjustments he needs to make. But they haven’t gotten where they are today by not having high standards, especially when Al _knows_ he can do better.

It’s not a problem he anticipates at all until it happens, because he’d never had issues controlling his transmutations even after ending up in the armour. If anything, it seems like it _should_ be easier now that he’s back in his own body and all.

But he’d been ten the last time he’d done alchemy in this body, and regardless of how unusually precocious they had been, it’s still a big step (to put it mildly) from there to the transmutations he mentally _expects_ to be doing now in terms of precision, scale, and pretty much everything else. 

And that’s not even accounting for Gate-given knowledge.

Not that Al had been foolhardy enough to go without circles right away on his first try. He even waits until after they get back to Resembool, because the conditions of his discharge had been very clear (the nurses had been terrifying, and then Lieutenant Hawkeye had been _terrifying_ ), and besides there’d been too much risk of a rebound with how easily he tires.

Still, when he finally does it during a break between his morning exercise in the Rockbells’ yard, the last thing Al expects is the immediately-recognisable surge of too much power the second he puts his hands to the circle.

Al makes a high _eeeep_ of a squeak as he quickly redirects the energy, siphoning the excess off as light, and Ed must’ve caught some of it because he calls out over the familiar mismatched sound of running footsteps. “Al! You okay?”

“I’m fine!” Al blinks away the afterimages, grinning sheepishly as Ed slows to a stop beside him. “Just overestimated the power a bit.”

“You’re lucky Teacher wasn’t here to see _that_ ,” Ed says in return, expression relaxing into something that twitches almost like a laugh as he flops down onto the grass beside Al. “You’re really okay, though?”

Worrywart. Al rolls his eyes. “Really. It’s just been a while, that’s all.”

Ed snorts. “No shit. Guess it’s kinda like my arm, huh? Who knew muscle memory could be such a pain. Though at least I haven’t accidentally broken any plates yet.”

“Yet,” Al repeats just to be contrary, before scooting swiftly away to dodge the jab at his side.

(At least muscle memory also remembers which spots he’s ticklish in. He’ll just have to work on the rest.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #you'd think being an armour for however long would make al impervious to tickling #you would be wrong #al is Conflicted about this


	33. [winry, ed, al; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Y’know, about that cold-climate model you built for me before,” Ed begins over lunch one afternoon when Granny’s away in town, and Winry almost doubts her hearing on reflex. (Ed? Talking about automail? Over _food?_ )

“Y’know, about that cold-climate model you built for me before,” Ed begins over lunch one afternoon when Granny’s away in town, and Winry almost doubts her hearing on reflex (Ed? Talking about automail? Over _food?_ ) – except that he’s actually bothered swallowing before speaking for once so she’s definitely _not_ mishearing him. “Think you could figure out a hot-climate one? Maybe with fibreglass to make a thermal break of sorts, but even a minimal cooling system would be great, except that you’d have to be absolutely certain the sand can’t get in–”

Winry can’t help the screech even as the always tinkering-part of her brain runs away with the idea. “ _ **Sand?**_ What kind of _reckless idiocy_ are you planning to commit with _my_ automail, Edward Elric!” 

She catches the tilt of Al’s head out the corner of her eye, but before she can wonder about it Ed flips back out of thinking mode to much more familiar yelling. “Excuse me!? _I_ was the one getting roasted like a damn turkey the last time, and it wasn’t even my idea to go there!”

Winry opens her mouth to snap back a retort… then blinks as Ed’s words register. “Go where?”

“Xerxes,” Al answers instead, serving himself another ladle of stew. “Or rather its ruins. Right, Brother?”

Ed nods, nudging his plate forward towards Al (who rolls his eyes but picks the ladle back up anyway). “I mean, I guess it’s kinda less of a mystery now that we know what really happened, but still – it’s _Xerxes_. Even _Ling’s_ been there.”

Winry frowns, recalling her encounters with the prince. “On the way here, you mean? What for?”

“Yeah, cause we both – Xing and Amestris, I mean – consider Xerxes the birthplace of alchemy. Alkahestry,” Ed tacks on, half-muffled by the spoon in his mouth. “Which, not wrong at all, it _is_ where we get it from.”

_In more ways than one,_ Al implies loudly with one raised eyebrow, but luckily for their collective peace and well-being Ed bulldozes right past and away from any Hohenheim-related explosions. “You oughta come too, Winry.”

“Me? Why?”

“I’d say Granny too, except I figure she’d outright break my leg if I suggested dragging her out there.” Ed gives a half-shrug. “There’s some people who I think you’d like to meet, if they’re still there. Maybe I’ll ask Scar too, make it a real party.”

“I don’t believe that’s what people usually call a _party_ , Brother,” Al says mildly, but he’s smiling as he passes the pepper before Ed can even ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> infomercial voice: if you like this, check out my [inaugural fma crackfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25842586) featuring sharks


	34. [al, roy, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What catches Al’s eye instead is the looks Mustang and Hawkeye give each other. It’s one he recognises very easily, both from having witnessed their co-conspirator tendencies over the years and from trading similar looks with Ed more times than he can even remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yet another loose continuation to [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006/chapters/62569603) and [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006/chapters/62569633). aka al getting mistaken as the fullmetal alchemist, which collided with a thought about the significance of the people’s alchemist thing and all

When Al tells General Mustang’s team about the cases of mistaken identity on his next stop in Central City, he expects the rounds of hearty laughter and exaggerated disbelief.

What catches his eye instead is the looks Mustang and Hawkeye give each other. It’s one he recognises very easily, both from having witnessed their co-conspirator tendencies over the years and from trading similar looks with Ed more times than he can even remember.

(Their poor overtaxed schoolteacher in Resembool had called it the “double trouble Elrics” look. Winry complains about it under far more creative names; Al has so far refrained from pointing out that honestly, she’s almost just as bad about being in sync with Ed now that they were regularly together for longer than an automail repair job.)

Al can’t deny his curiosity, but still he waits until it’s just him and the two of them to ask. “You had an idea while I was talking earlier, didn’t you?” No point beating about the bush, though at least Al doesn’t level them with the _look_ he’d have given Ed and Winry.

(Ed calls that one the “hand in cookie jar” look. Which is rich coming from him of all people, since Al is fairly certain his brother would never stop at one cookie when he could’ve just taken the whole jar.)

Another look between them. “It’s not terribly important,” Hawkeye ventures.

Al raises an eyebrow at that; he’s even more intrigued now. “If it’s any consolation, since I’ve never been officially under either of your command, I wouldn’t feel obliged to carry out anything you ask of me any more than Brother ever did.”

That garners an eyeroll of _which is to say not at all_ from Mustang, and a flicker of a grin from Hawkeye, who nods and continues.

“I suppose you probably wouldn’t have followed the news much in Resembool, but – well, after the dust settled, there was actually quite a clamour about the Fullmetal Alchemist vanishing from the public eye after the Promised Day. Edward has always been rather popular among the people,” she adds, very dryly, “in case none of you noticed.”

“Fullmetal realising his celebrity status? Woe betide us,” Mustang says, deadpan. “He’d probably have gone around transmuting his signature into buildings and calling it an autograph, knowing him.”

Al snickers at the (admittedly plausible) mental image before refocusing on the matter at hand, because their idea is now fairly apparent in the face of this information. “And you’d prefer if I went around pretending to be Brother?”

…okay, he’d maybe phrased it like that just to see their reactions, and the collective wince had made it worthwhile.

“Not exactly – frankly, it’s been long enough that it’d be _more_ conspicuous if you went around proclaiming yourself to be Fullmetal now,” Mustang muses. “Just, if incidents like that happen again, there’s no real harm in allowing people to incorrectly assume your identity. Your style of alchemy is similar enough anyway, at least to the untrained eye.”

“And there’s no need to say where you – or rather Edward – have been, though I doubt anyone will be sitting you down for an interrogation. You can direct any persistent askers to the General’s office, if necessary.” Hawkeye doesn’t even pause for Mustang’s token protest. “We’re not trying to give them someone to rally around or anything, but it _would_ be a welcome boost to public morale.”

By demonstrating that the people’s alchemist hadn’t died during the Promised Day – or worse yet, been somehow complicit in those events, Al finishes mentally. And he’s seen firsthand that the political upheaval since then hasn’t been easy on most people, but Ed _has_ always been rather effective at making people move forward (albeit occasionally by bodily shoving them).

Honestly, this would all be much more convenient if it hadn’t been Al sitting here, but Ed had put in his retirement from the military practically the second the hospital nurses allowed him paper and pen, and General Mustang is trying to respect that even amidst whatever political cobweb he’s spinning.

Al appreciates it, which is part of why he nods and says, “I’ll agree for now, since it’s not much different to what I was doing anyway. But I _will_ be telling Brother about it the next time we meet, so I’d suggest transmuting your office door stronger sometime in the next month.”

“Better make sure your secretary has the property damage report forms handy, sir,” Hawkeye says unsympathetically. “I’m sure you can figure out how to fill those out, you’ve definitely seen me doing it often enough.”

“Might want to transmute some sound insulation for your walls too, since Brother is probably going to laugh for several minutes straight about your world domination plans,” Al adds critically.

Mustang groans and thunks his head onto the table.


	35. [one (1) very done xing finance undersecretary; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Yi had been tasked with accompanying His Highness the Crown Prince Yao on the trade deal negotiations with Amestris, this is not what they had been expecting. 
> 
> (Then again, they hadn’t expected to be tasked with this _at all_ to begin with – if they’d ever wanted an eventful life they would’ve joined literally _any other department_ besides the Ministry of Revenue, for heaven’s sake.)

When Yi had been tasked with accompanying His Highness the Crown Prince Yao on the trade deal negotiations with Amestris, this is not what they had been expecting. 

(Then again, they hadn’t expected to be tasked with this _at all_ to begin with – if they’d ever wanted an eventful life they would’ve joined literally _any other department_ besides the Ministry of Revenue, for heaven’s sake.

“Because the Minister is ancient and I’m allergic to the desert,” Vice-Minister Chen had said blandly; clearly the _why_ had been writ large on Yi’s face, even though they hadn’t been about to ask aloud. “Besides, it’s no secret that the Crown Prince has the best chance of getting a favourable deal out of those Amestrisans anyway, as long as he doesn’t get distracted. That’ll be your main job, though nominally you’re there as a third party to ensure that he doesn’t ask for anything blatantly in favour of the Yao or Chang clans, since the Lins aren’t affiliated to either. Security’s already handled as well, you don’t have to worry about that.”

………Yi hadn’t even realised that _could_ be something to worry about until right then. It was knowledge they really, _really_ could’ve done without, just like the terrifying midnight visit from the Crown Prince’s knife-happy bodyguard to make sure that Yi isn’t some kind of assassin posing as a finance undersecretary.

Totally uncalled for, since if it’d been daylight Yi could’ve just shown with a schedule and simple math that they didn’t have time to work two jobs even if they’d wanted to.

Which they don’t; the only person they’ve ever wanted to murder is that one clerk in Jingzhou who _always_ messed up the tax filings, and even that would be more trouble that it was worth.) 

Anyway. Yi’s preparation for this diplomatic visit had mostly been focused on reviewing the proposed trade deal, but they’d known even before leaving Xing that they were going to be negotiating with the Flame Alchemist, and… well, even someone who cared as little about politics as they did couldn’t help having _some_ kind of assumptions on hearing that.

Which, Yi decides as they accept a mug of tea from General Mustang’s capable adjutant, only goes to show why they should continue sticking with numbers forever, seeing as pretty much every one of those assumptions had been mistaken. The tea is actually well-made, first of all, not burnt like the traders to Amestris always complained about.

It’s not poisoned, either, though of course Yi only thinks about that _after_ the Crown Prince has taken several big gulps of tea, any one of which would probably have been sufficiently toxic if it’d actually been poisoned.

Which is in turn after the adjutant places a mug on… huh, the sill of a half-open window.

Yi blinks at that, then at the Flame Alchemist, who heaves the familiar sigh of the bureaucratically-burdened. “Can you _please_ ask Lan Fan to just come in, we really could do without another assassination scare.”

The Crown Prince laughs – _cackles,_ more accurately, like it’s not weird at all that a foreign general knows his bodyguard by name. “For that, your sentries would actually have to _spot_ her first. Anyway, it’s just more incentive for you to wrap this up quickly, no? I’ve got an all-you-can-eat out there somewhere with my name on it!”

“Please don’t say that like _I’m_ the one who’s been causing the delays in this deal.”

“Well, the last time it was Ed– huh, where _are_ they, anyway?” the Crown Prince asks, twisting around in his seat like he expects someone to materialise despite the closed office door. “I’d have thought they would be here by now.”

General Mustang looks very much like he’s mentally pinching the bridge of his nose, which Yi mostly recognises by virtue of experiencing the exact same emotion. “In interest of finishing this sometime today, I banned the Elrics from stepping foot into Central Command until Hawkeye gives them the all-clear.”

Yi’s brain gets so stuck on _the Elrics_ (calculating their potential lucrativeness in Xing’s economy _is_ one of the most popular Ministry of Revenue party games after all) that they almost miss the Crown Prince’s question. 

“So what’s the all-clear?”

“These kittens we happened to have found this morning,” answers General Mustang, the Flame Alchemist, as his adjutant indicates the definitely-meowing cloth-lined basket in one corner of the room. “Which I’m sure you wouldn’t want to deprive Alphonse of for a moment longer than necessary – _stop laughing before I stuff these documents in your face._ ”

Then the general has to dodge the _thwip_ of a knife flying in through the window to embed itself in the wall while the Crown Prince falls off his seat laughing and the adjutant remains completely unruffled.

“More tea?” she asks serenely.

Yi nods fervently, holding out the mug like they hadn’t left the desert after all. “Please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #*strums guitar* so no one ever told you amestris was gonna be this way #no felines were harmed in the negotiation of this trade deal #only the sanity and well-being of underpaid finance undersecretary yi lin #they just arrived and already they're Done(tm) with this shit #anyway this was supposed to be half the length and featuring offscreen elrics #but no one ever told me life was gonna be this way either
> 
> (and yes yi lin goes by they/theirs and intense internal screaming @ amestris)


	36. [al, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Can I ask you something personal, Colonel Hawkeye? Not like– I mean, personal about _me_ , not you!” Al adds hastily.

They’re both whittling away at paperwork – officer evaluation forms and medical apprenticeship applications respectively – when Alphonse’s voice breaks the afternoon silence of the office.

“Can I ask you something personal, Colonel Hawkeye? Not like– I mean, personal about _me_ , not you!” he adds hastily.

Riza suppresses a smile at the verbal flail; it’s quite unnecessary, since there’s surprisingly little that she would truly balk at disclosing to the Elrics, but the thought is appreciated nevertheless. “You may,” she answers, setting her files aside to give him her full attention.

Alphonse mirrors her actions, but keeps the pen in his hand, not-quite-tapping it against the table in a motion Riza recognises from the (admittedly rare) occasions when he or Edward have had to ponder for more than a second over a transmutation circle. Not too different, she supposes, only that he’s now trying to piece words together instead of symbols.

“I mean, you know how Brother and Winry are,” Alphonse begins, and Riza nods; it’d have been harder _not_ to notice, even if Breda and Havoc and the rest hadn’t specifically gotten back together to tease Edward until he turned as red as his old coat. “I see them together even more than you all do, and I’m really _really_ happy for them, but I – don’t think I want anything like that. Not now, maybe not ever.” Alphonse fiddles with the pen once more before setting it down on the table. “That’s not very typical, is it?”

For a moment Riza’s mildly – only mildly – tempted to point out that neither he nor his brother have ever had more than a passing acquaintance with _typical_ , but better sense prevails. (She can always just sass the General more later.) “You’re a sensible young man, Alphonse, you’re more than capable of making your own decisions on this.”

Al ducks his head with a small smile. “Well, yes, but I figured I’d get a second opinion, and I trust your judgement.” 

A pause. 

“General Mustang’s too, of course, but he’s…”

“Not exactly the image of a responsible adult?” she finishes dryly.

“I’m an adult,” Alphonse says plaintively, then adds with a touch of fond despair, “ _Brother’s_ an adult.”

Riza can’t hide the grin this time. “Not all it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

“Can’t say we had much expectations of it, besides Brother wanting a growth spurt or two,” he answers with a roll of his eyes before sobering, the question still in the set of his shoulders, and it’s Riza’s turn to find the right words now.

Fortunately, unlike _certain_ other people, honestly generally isn’t something she has to consciously work at. 

“You wanted my opinion. And my opinion _is_ that your judgement is going to be the most sound on this matter. _However_ ,” she continues before Alphonse’s eyebrows can dip for more than a moment in a silent frown at the technical non-answer, “your current sentiments are also valid and perfectly understandable. As long as you don’t inadvertently lock yourself into a corner, but I gather that’s why you’re studying the Dragon’s Pulse, right? To be more aware of the flow of things?”

Alphonse gives something dangerously close to a snort at that. “Mei would have a conniption about misapplication of principles if she heard that.”

“Miss Chang is welcome to meet me at the target range anytime,” Riza says with full sincerity. “Also, if any of you ever end up doing something just to conform, I may be forced to lose the only bet I have in Captain Fuery’s books. Just for the record.”

This time Alphonse definitely laughs as he returns to the application form, flipping to the last page. “Guess I have no choice but to tell Winry to go ahead with her wrench bouquet plans, then.”

“Florists everywhere will be devastated,” Riza observes. “Along with whoever ends up catching it.”

“Not as devastated as they’ll be if they miss and end up getting hit instead,” Alphonse agrees solemnly as he reaches for the pen again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #all other headcanons are valid but you will pry my aroace ones from my cold dead hands #and you WILL fail


	37. [al, ed; unrepentant crack au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So he looks deliberately from his arm to the kettle’s handle before reaching for it again, which is why he definitely, 100% sees it this time when his hand passes _through_ the kettle.
> 
> “Huh,” Al says.

**i.**

When Al reaches for the kettle and misses while trying to prepare breakfast one morning, he chalks it up to misjudging the distance. That still happens sometimes, especially when he’s not completely awake (which is definitely applicable right now, seeing as he _had_ been wanting the kettle to make coffee).

So he looks deliberately from his arm to the kettle’s handle before reaching for it again, which is why he definitely, 100% sees it this time when his hand passes _through_ the kettle.

“Huh,” Al says.

It’s about as far as he gets before Ed yells bloody murder (of the non-literal kind; it’s generally pertinent to specify in Brother’s case) from upstairs.

* * *

**ii.**

Turns out being displaced from your body for several formative years means that Al’s soul just… isn’t terribly attached to his body anymore?

So. That’s a thing, now.

* * *

**iii.**

“It doesn’t make sense, though, that I’m corporeal with respect to the floor but not everything else,” Al contemplates aloud.

“ _That’s_ what you’re concerned about!?” Ed retorts – howls, really, which is both overdramatic and rather hypocritical to boot, seeing as he’d _totally_ be all over quantifying this from a scientific perspective if it’d been him being inconsistently tangible at different surfaces. “Get back into your body already!”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Al says, dodging around both Ed’s shoving hands and a very tousle-haired Winry poking her head out from her room, stifling a yawn as she blinks askance at them. 

He’s managing to move around so far by not thinking too much about it, but walking into either of them will _definitely_ make him think too much about it. And that’s even setting aside the question of what exactly will happen if he does; two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, that’s just physics, but the Pauli exclusion principle hadn’t really considered one of those objects being soul matter. 

(He can’t even chalk that up to Pauli having not been an alchemist – there’s stuff within the domain of alchemists, and then there’s stuff that’s within the domain of alchemists named Elric. This definitely falls into the latter.)

Though he supposes it’s a question that’ll end up being answered shortly anyway, since returning to his body will presumably involve overlapping volumes with it.

Given their track record, Al assigns a low-but-nonzero chance that it’ll end with a messy explosion of death, destruction, and possibly antimatter; it’s certainly shaping up to be that kind of day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #this isn't even the first accidentally-ghost fic i've written #the concept is just too funny to me shut up


	38. [roy; summer tyranny]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he’d been the one with a nationwide transmutation circle, Roy thinks glumly, he’d have used it to cool this whole damned country down.

If he’d been the one with a nationwide transmutation circle, Roy thinks glumly, he’d have used it to cool this whole damned country down. Or at least remove the fangs of summer, even if you couldn’t defeat the beast.

It’d be difficult – nonsensical, really, trying to fight entropy on any kind of sustained basis, but then he’s got the Elrics’ destructive inventiveness to call on, plus his own sheer bloody-minded desperation. Hell, he could probably figure out how to gather up and dump the heat _somewhere_ , except that he doesn’t hate any of their neighbours enough to do that. In this weather that’d practically be equivalent to a declaration of war.

Then again, with how his brain is most empathically out of order at the moment, the chances are considerably higher that he’d end up blowing all of Amestris to smithereens anyway; he fancies he can hear the sluggish synapses misfiring, neurons sizzling like sun-fried wires. 

Though it’s hard to decide if mass destruction would _really_ be a failure, given that it’d at least put them out of this collective misery. 

Alchemically speaking it might be easier to just shift the thermal energy around – siphon the heat up to the north and make the whole country one isothermic mass. But then Olivier wouldn’t even need to lift a finger before all of Briggs descended bloody vengeance unto him, and _then_ she’d figure out human transmutation for real just to resurrect him for long enough to freeze the north all over again.

And then they’d be back to where they started, except Roy would be buried in an icy grave. A vast improvement over being here at his desk, staring raptly at the pitcher of water that just barely (very _very_ barely) passed for cold.

“Would it be terribly unseemly of me to empty the whole lot over my head?” he wonders aloud, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the atmosphere too decided to mutiny instead of moving far enough to carry the voices of the poor humans subject to their whims.

“Extremely, sir,” Riza answers, but her heart isn’t in it; Roy can hear her writing in that carefully measured way which means she’s trying not to smudge the ink under sweat-damp skin.

Or maybe he’s mistaken after all, and the sound is just her entertaining fantasies of opening the window and shooting the sun out of the sky, then unloading another magazine into it for good measure.

God, he _hopes_ it is. Maybe she’ll even consider it if he demonstrates initiative in requisitioning the heaviest fucking ammo from the trigger-happy arsenal that _is_ Amestris, replete with the entire nightmare of red tape that surrounds it.

Still less work than getting entropy-murdered by Olivier, he decides. Worth keeping in mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #it's. too damn warm. i'm suffering #ms riza will you murder the sun if i ask nicely


	39. [jean + the team, ed; definitely a freak accident]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean just wants to make one thing – okay, a _few_ things – very clear.
> 
> First of all: this whole mess is only “probably” Ed’s fault in the same way that any explosion in his vicinity is maybe connected to him. 
> 
> (an ode to the trials and tribulations of working from home. or something like that. take heart, my fellow adults)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ninthfeather asked me a [perfectly reasonable question](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/627706289788715008/a-concept-working-from-home-east-city-military) about mustang's team working from home. my brain produced this instead because sometimes that's just how it works
> 
> ft. a healthy serving of my own relevant woes

Jean just wants to make one thing – okay, a _few_ things – very clear.

First of all: this whole mess is only “probably” Ed’s fault in the same way that any explosion in his vicinity is maybe connected to him. 

Or that one time the electricity went out in a nearly two-mile radius around East Command at the same time Ed was messing around with some magnetic alchemy thing. (Though to be fair Fuery _had_ also been messing around with an unusually large number of radios at the time, so who knew.)

Which is to say that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and thrice is the _other_ sort of coincidence where a lady might look at him despite the Colonel being in the same room. Also pigs might fly, and Breda might lose at chess.

That kind of coincidence.

At least the coincidence had possessed the decency to _not_ burst the pipes all over the paperwork this time, because there aren’t enough cigarettes in the world to make Jean redo this whole lot from scratch again. The coincidence is, actually, sheepishly transmuting watertight boxes so they can carry stuff without it being dripped on out in the corridors, but unfortunately no amount of clapping is going to solve the fact that Jean’s flat is so _not_ ready for the commitment of being the home in “home office”.

It’s not like he lives in a pigsty or anything – helping out in his parents’ general store since forever has instilled basic housekeeping by force, and ha-ha-East-country-hick aesthetic isn’t something you exactly want to bring people home to anyway. Just that he’d decorated with… a very specific purpose in mind, okay? 

That brings him to point number two: he doesn’t _have_ a desk. 

Aside from the one in the office, obviously. Which is where, y’know, he’d _kind of_ expected to be doing all of his paperwork? 

Sure, he could probably rediscover the surface of his dining table if he cleared enough of the clutter away. But somehow Jean has a deep-seated fear – nay, certainty – that the Lieutenant will _know_ if he writes his reports on anything short of A Proper Desk, and make him do it _all over again_ , I understand the temptation but please do refrain from cursing in official paperwork, Lieutenant Havoc.

Ed’s doing the closest equivalent of wringing his hands, tugging at the edges of his coat like he’s got half a mind to disappear into it, and _why_ haven’t they started enforcing not letting him do alchemy experiments in the office when Al isn’t around? They really _really_ should, and by that Jean mostly means the Lieutenant. 

God knows she’s the embodiment of 80% of their common sense and all of their impulse control anyway.

“Sorry about this,” Ed says again, followed by, “Sure you don’t want me to fix it? I could probably figure it out in like, five minutes flat if I could just find a building plan with the pipes included.”

“I think we’ve had enough of experimenting for today, Fullmetal. Unless you also gained a professional plumber’s license while I wasn’t looking,” the Colonel observes very dryly, and the collective wince goes around the room like a summer cold; that tone has never boded well for anyone except (once again) the Lieutenant. “And you have nothing to be sorry for, only in the most literal sense, because we are all putting this down as a freak accident. Which _nobody_ here had _any_ part in causing, and which will never happen again. Do I make myself clear?”

…aaaaand there’s the third thing: barefaced lying about the first so that Finance and Personnel don’t both descend upon them like a kettle of administrative vultures.

Ed looks properly chastised. Jean even gives him a very generous three weeks before he gets back to it again.

Well. Maybe he can help transmute a writing desk for Jean before then, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #riza: stop fucking swearing in your reports lieutenant havoc #jean looking absolutely stunned: yes sir
> 
> also i didn't set out to write it like that but i guess this sorta reads like a pretty bit earlier in ed's time with the team. (where's al? idk but he better come back soon, or east command will not survive to reach canon)
> 
> by the by, check out [my latest au ft. roy and riza](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26124976) if you haven't already


	40. [riza, ed, al, cat; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lump on the couch lets out a string of wholly intelligible noises.
> 
> Riza quirks an eyebrow. “I’m afraid only Alphonse speaks that particular dialect of couch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we are folks, 40 chapters of the elric show and still going!!!! what the hell (in a good but also Very Baffled way)
> 
> a big thanks/shoutout/shower of love to everyone who's commented on these fics here or elsewhere – i promise you i read every last word of it, i am just terrible at replying. also i am super stoked that enough people enjoy the particular slice of content that is post-canon, since my brain is stuck hurtling on this track?? at frankly concerning speeds???
> 
> anyway. i [resurrected my tumblr](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com) (no alchemy required) and basically live in it now, so come lurk/say hi/inundate my inbox with short jokes, because i find them funny even if ed doesn't
> 
> ok enough babble, on with the chapter

When Riza opens the front door of the Elrics’ flat in Central (which is nominally under their name but potentially occupied by any combination of a remarkable assortment of people at any given time, an alarming percentage of whom scorned mundane things like keys in favour of lock-picking and fifth-floor windows) it’s to find Edward sprawled facedown on the couch, golden hair loose in a veritable halo around him.

Sprawled so throughly, in fact, that he doesn’t even twitch at her entrance, lying still enough that a fainter-hearted person might’ve gone screaming for help.

Fortunately for all concerned, this doesn’t even rank in comparison to some of the histrionics Riza’s been front-line witness to over the years, so she merely closes the door behind her and returns the spare key to the hidden pocket in her purse. “Should I be concerned?”

The lump on the couch lets out a string of wholly intelligible noises.

Riza quirks an eyebrow. “I’m afraid only Alphonse speaks that particular dialect of couch.”

That gets Edward huffing something recognisable as laughter, before pushing himself up far enough so that he can flop over – backwards this time, glaring at the ceiling. 

“Apparently I can’t just pull research all-nighters whenever I want anymore,” he says, in the same sullen groan that other people might’ve used for _the doctor says no more drinking ever unless I’ve decided a liver is optional._

“Ah.” Riza doesn’t bother with outward sympathy like she might’ve done usually, because Edward’s never appreciated that, but the sentiment is genuine nonetheless. 

As is her retroactive relief that she hadn’t badgered the General into coming along after all, since she can already imagine him ragging Edward about getting old, and. Well. She’s already suffered through more than her share of juvenile hair-pulling arguments after the demilitarisation council meetings today, thank you very much.

It’s why she’d decided to drop by and see the Elrics now instead of waiting for the weekend; at least when they descend into petty sniping at each other it’s entertaining to watch rather than a complete waste of time.

Though speaking of which – Riza’s just about to ask where Alphonse is when Edward’s low-level grumbling is interrupted by a meow.

He curses under his breath, and since it’s definitely not for Riza’s benefit (she _had_ been present for the swear-off between him and Havoc and Breda, after all) she assumes it’s for the benefit of the smaller lump he’s now untangling from his hair, which resolves into a kitten-shaped bundle as Edward bellows. _“AL!”_

True to form, Alphonse chooses that moment to – for lack of a more dignified word – _sail in_ through the front door with a paper bag of groceries in either arm. It lends further credence to the betting pool about the Elrics _actually_ having telepath; Riza’s not a betting person, so her concern is mostly about how many of Roy Mustang’s mannerisms Alphonse appears to have picked up on. 

He smiles brightly as he makes a beeline past her to deposit the bags on the kitchen counter. “Hullo, Colonel Hawkeye.”

Riza nods cordially in return. Any reply she might have made would’ve been drowned out by Edward’s now-louder complaints about _cats_ in his _hair_.

The feline in question looks fairly unperturbed despite being held like a beaker of flammable propellant (Riza supposes that’s what it’d take, anyway, to approach a sleeping Elric) and Alphonse seems to agree as he homes in on them like a magnet. “Aw, Brother, Cookies likes you! I think it’s the shiny hair.”

Edward holds it even further from his face – not very high, all told, since he’s not gotten up from the couch yet, but out of batting range from his hair. “It does not like me it just wants to make me bald _why are you naming your cats after food now Al have you not been eating enough_.”

“Not all food,” Alphonse says reproachfully, like this is a reasonable thing to be arguing about. “Some of them are condiments, and if there’s anyone here who’s not been eating properly it’s you. _Have_ you been in the library this whole time since I went out?”

Riza decides to help put away the groceries. A good half of the cupboard labels are scrawled in Xingese, but after all the diplomatic missions she can manage that much.

Edward’s mulish scowl is practically audible anyway.

“I’m really not above persuading _every librarian in this city_ to bar you from entering, y’know,” Alphonse threatens, though it loses much of the intimidation factor when he’s clearly cooing over the bundle of meow. “Don’t make me do it.”

“You wouldn’t have to if those imperial alkahestrists would stop using fucking _Riemannian geometry_ in their arrays, including the extra dimensional variables into the calculations is a bloody pain.”

“Well, it’s far more intuitive if you can feel–”

“–yeah, the Dragon’s Pulse, I know, ugh. But that doesn’t exclude it from having to make sense mathematically, too, and _mmmphf_.”

Riza glances back into the living room to find that Edward has been derailed by virtue of his brother liberating Cookies to replace it with something actually edible instead, to which Edward’s response is as blessedly predictable as ever. 

Alphonse must catch her looking, as well, or at least he realises that Riza’s not exactly free enough to drop by for a purely social call these days. “Was there something you wanted to discuss with us, Colonel?”

“Something we’d like you both to investigate, yes,” Riza confirms. “No one’s quite sure what’s happening, but it’s probably going to need alchemists to resolve – I’ll pass you the briefing later, but it’s probably easier if I explain first. Shall I make some tea?”

Alphonse nods, leaning over to set Cookie down on one of the cat highways transmuted into the walls of their flat. “Second cupboard from the right, bottom shelf.”

“But _not_ any of the tins with Xingese on it,” Edward pauses in inhaling food to add. “That’s Al’s dead leaf juice collection, it’s _vile_.”

“Ginseng is good for you, and it’s not a leaf. I _know_ you know this.” Alphonse unceremoniously clears Edward’s feet off the couch far enough for him to sit, earning him a hiss that’s not unlike a cat. “It’s the black tin with gold lettering, Colonel, you can bring some back with you to try if you’d like.”

“That’d be lovely, thank you.” Riza glances through the labels until she finds something low on caffeine; powering through today’s meetings required enough coffee that she might not be entirely imagining the hum in her bloodstream. “I’d also suggest working out actual prices for your consultation work, since bartering favours isn’t going to be sustainable, if you’re planning to go into this for the long term.”

Or rather if they plan on consulting with anyone _besides_ the one person who can be counted on not to forget such favours when it’s convenient, but there’s no need to spell it out with the Elrics.

She unearths a clearly-neglected tin of white tea in time to see Edward flapping a hand carelessly as he pointedly relocates his feet onto Alphonse’s lap. “Take that up with Al.”

Alphonse sighs, but doesn’t otherwise move. “I’ll be happy to listen to any suggestions you might have, Colonel.”

“I can draw up some tables based on what others have charged for similar services in the past,” Riza agrees, like anyone could really offer anything close to what the Elrics have. “Also most tea _is_ dead leaf juice.”

“Exactl– _hey!_ ” Edward’s head pops up from the couch like a betrayed prairie dog with a bad hair day. “Whose side are you on!?”

“The winning one,” Riza answers mildly, and sets the kettle to boil while they argue over whose side that is. 

(Cookies pauses on the nearest piece of highway to eye her hair clip, and Alphonse must be right: it _does_ seem to like shiny things. Riza resolves to find out where they keep the cat treats.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #one more for the 'ed is okay post-canon' pile


	41. [ed, riza, and switchboard operator susan glines]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed!” Ed calls out, loud enough to be heard but not to startle, and manages not to laugh – _unarmed,_ ha ha – only by dint of catching the slight rise-and-fall of Al’s shoulders that means he’s sighing silently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: all names cribbed off the wikipedia article on switchboard operators. no historical figures were harmed in the making of this fic, only plagiarised

“Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed!” Ed calls out, loud enough to be heard but not to startle, and manages not to laugh – _unarmed_ , ha ha – only by dint of catching the slight rise-and-fall of Al’s shoulders that means he’s sighing silently.

The bank robbers swivel to face him like so many trigger-happy sunflowers, and Ed mentally catalogues them even as he keeps talking. Which _is_ a valid strategy, it’s worked for him so far and he doesn’t care what anyone says. People generally have trouble doing anything when they’re being talked endlessly at. Ed knows this firsthand from too much Winry exposure.

“It’s a hostage you want, right? To negotiate with the military? Take me. I’m all discharged and everything–” (and here Ed thunks his left leg against the floor sharply enough for the automail to be heard; it irks him to see them making assumptions about why he’d been discharged but it’s for a worthy cause, Winry will just have to forgive any dents) “–but I still know things some people won’t want getting out. It’ll be much easier than lugging around a buncha crying kids, too.”

The gang’s apparent leader squints belligerently back from under scarred eyebrows, and damn, Amestris’ criminal class really _does_ lack creativity in comparison to Creta and Aerugo (and Xing, going off Al’s anecdotes). “Yeah? And why should we trust you?”

“Because I’ve got as much of a beef to settle with them as you do.” Ed bares his teeth in a grin he hasn’t really unleashed in _years_ ; it’s still easy to call up as anything, and the contempt doesn’t even need much faking since there _are_ still some parts of the military that he’d like to send a giant fuck-you of a love letter to. 

His coat is burnished brown (turns out that bright red cloth isn’t exactly in abundant supply especially when he can’t alchemise away large tears) and the name Fullmetal almost rolls right off his tongue, but Ed holds it back because he’s actually here to _avoid_ trouble instead of make it, believe it or not. 

“Tell those assholes that Major Elric called, and I damn well want every cent of the retirement benefits they owe me.”

* * *

Being a switchboard operator for the military isn’t usually half as exciting as it might sound.

Susan doesn’t mind. Sure, she can’t exactly deny that she’d signed up hoping for at least a _little_ excitement, but more practically she’s always had a good head for names and numbers, and the benefits were better than your average desk job in the city.

Plus answering that she works in the military always gets the more annoying relatives to shut right up during family reunions, which is a definite plus in her book.

Still. The closest she’s been to excitement so far had been that one whispered debate in the mess hall about how strict the background checks for operators had been getting, which O’Connor had insisted was due to espionage concerns from someone high up the chain. Susan hadn’t been sure whether to believe her, but either way it’d still been the only thing worthy of lunch gossip.

Until this afternoon, that is.

Rationally Susan knows that the wait isn’t any longer than usual, but it still feels like a small eternity before there’s the familiar click of someone picking up. “Mustang speaking.”

“Urgent call for you, sir,” Susan says, and tries not to sound _too_ relieved that General Mustang is at his desk after all. “Ongoing robbery at the bank downtown, they’ve taken a hostage and are demanding to negotiate with you.”

“With me specifically?” General Mustang asks, but doesn’t give her enough time to reply before continuing. “Any further details? Did they say who the hostage is?”

The answers to the first two questions are _yes_ and _no_ respectively, which probably isn’t very helpful anyway, so Susan decides to skip straight to the last one. “They said it was a retired major, sir. By the name of Elric?”

Susan hadn’t even needed to refer to her scribbled notes for that, but she doesn’t even get to pat herself on the back because there’s the distinct sound of a phone receiver hitting the table.

She winces on reflex (honestly, the way some people mistreated the equipment then complained about poor reception) before realising that she should probably be concerned. What if the robbers had somehow gotten _into_ the building? It seemed unlikely, but, well. “General Mustang?”

Alas, she doesn’t manage to get very far into her imagination of some superpowered sniper situation when a far brisker voice comes over the phone.

“Riza Hawkeye speaking,” says Colonel Hawkeye – _the_ Colonel Hawkeye, like she actually needed to identify herself by full name to anyone who so much as breathed air in this building. (Susan avoided the gun range, but she’d seen the Colonel absolutely _shredding_ two recruits who’d been hassling Emma for days; it had been a religious experience.) “I’m afraid the General’s slightly indisposed at the moment. Can you say that last part again?”

“The hostage is Major Elric, retired,” Susan manages to say instead of _did you know you have a fan club? We meet on the last Thursday of each month_.

“I see.”

By some heroic strength of will Susan manages to corral her brain cells back into order, because she is _not_ going to mess up in front of (or rather over the phone with) Colonel Hawkeye. “Could it be a hoax?”

“No, it’s genuine,” the Colonel answers, then amends, “Likely to be, at least. Do you still have them on the line, Private Glines?”

“Yes, Harriot – I mean Private Daley – is holding them on the external line.” Good thing she’d already had her one brainwave for the day, Susan thinks distantly, since she’s definitely not getting anything done now that she knows that _Colonel Hawkeye_ knows her name.

She can die happy now. The fan club will just have to deal with her haunting every meeting to retell this story _forever_.

(“Excellent,” Riza says, three floors up and unaware of the internal crisis of one Susan Glines, having dropped General Mustang’s coat over his face to muffle the hysterical sounds, “Please convey this message _exactly_ , on behalf of General Mustang: Surrender at once, or I’ll send Lieutenant Hayate after you.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ed, smirking at the robbers, who increasingly feel like there’s some inside joke they’re not in on: don’t be stupid, tell them i damn well know hayate’s all bark and no bite
> 
> (riza and al sigh simultaneously. mustang falls off his chair laughing.)
> 
> (meanwhile, susan glines recovers long enough to recall that there is no lieutenant named hayate in mustang’s team (because who doesn’t know mustang’s team) before lapsing back into her gay crisis)


	42. [roy, riza; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Take me out to dinner,” Riza says as the nurses weave anxiously around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mandatory plug: if you haven't already read the rest of my fics in this series – check 'em out! if this compilation is up your alley then the other fics probably are too, i just arbitrarily decide to post some stuff separately sometimes

“Take me out to dinner,” Riza says as the nurses weave anxiously around them, probably due to some combination of the multiple wounds, mysterious alkahestry, or equally mysterious blindness. Possibly all three.

Roy’s practiced in the mirror thoroughly enough to know what expression he’s making even when he can’t see it. That’s still applicable now, albeit in a more literal sense than he’d ever quite expected, and this face is the one usually reserved for _yes, you and I both know that’s the party line – now what’s the real story?_

By the same token, though, he can hear the flat edge of her look just from the clipped precision in her voice. 

“We overthrew the government. Take me out to dinner.” (Also perfectly audible: _there’s a thousand and one better things to charge us for, if anyone could spare the manpower for it._ Or that might just be the residual ringing in his ears.) “I’ll even let you pay just this once.”

She’s right, of course, but that’s hardly surprising.

Roy lets the tilt of his eyebrows shift into _I am not sighing aloud, but I_ will _have you know that I am terribly put upon._ “Well, when you put it like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> roy's imagine spot: 'i just became the fuhrer. i'll let you pay for this dinner.' 
> 
> jokes on you mustang you'll end up splitting the bill anyway 
> 
> actual riza: 'i didn't tear down the military-government complex for this not to be 50 50 sir' 
> 
> ed from outside the window: FUCK YEAH DEMOCRACY 
> 
> the fuhrer's personal guard: HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO GET IN HERE
> 
> also ed: fine i’m paying back the 520 cenz…… to hawkeye so she can pay for half plus 520 cenz and you BETTER not take that as a reason to bring her for a 1040 cenz dinner


	43. [al, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “‘Course it bloody figures,” Ed grumbles, “all those years we spent telling half the front desks in Amestris that they could just give us one bed if it’d stop them jacking up the prices so much, and _now_ they listen.”
> 
> “We’re not even in Amestris, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~this is what happens when you give a stubbornly gen author the "one bed" trope~~

“‘Course it bloody figures,” Ed grumbles, “all those years we spent telling half the front desks in Amestris that they could just give us one bed if it’d stop them jacking up the prices so much, and _now_ they listen.”

“We’re not even in Amestris, though.”

“No shit. Pretty sure I didn’t mess up saying _two beds_ though, pardon my Cretan. This job had damn well better be interesting.” 

Al refrains from mentioning that they’d only wrangled their schedules in sync enough to take an out-of-country consulting job together _because_ Ed’s eyes had lit up at the client’s letter like Xing at the lunar new year. “I could always transmute the bed wider, it looks sturdy enough for that. Or we could go back down to the front desk.”

“Hell no. I’m not suffering any more hospitality until I’ve had at least a night’s sleep.” 

Ed’s baggage thuds down like it’s a blunt weapon instead of half of a perfectly respectable pair of suitcases, which Winry and Mei had finally snapped and forced upon them after too long of never getting around to replacing their old tattered ones. 

(Al had worried, for just a moment, that Mei would’ve brought one with the combination alchemy-alkahestry locks that’d gotten unexpectedly popular of late, and just modified the design to match Ed’s. 

Luckily, mechanical locking had prevailed, which means that he and Ed can open each others’ cases in a pinch, since neither of them have been able to set a locking combination that the other can’t guess.)

(That’s _not_ to say that Al’s suitcase doesn’t have some… nasty surprises waiting for any unsuspecting soul who might try to pry it open. But it’s nothing compared to the victims that Ed has claimed via forceful application of suitcase; Al’s starting to suspect Winry reinforced Ed’s one with _sheet metal_.)

Al sets his things down far more sedately, but otherwise he’s inclined to agree with Ed – the train here had been long enough that even the thought of going back to the front desk now is… ugh. That can wait for tomorrow. 

Probably Ed had caught the face that Al had pulled, or more likely he’d simply arrived at the same conclusion. It’s not like he’s going to let _Al_ sleep on the floor either, after all. “If you kick me off the bed I’m gonna bruise you right back.”

“Says the one with the _actual metal leg._ ” Al unlocks his suitcase with a click and grabs a change of clothes while Ed is still rummaging for who-knows-what, because he really hadn’t gotten much better at efficient packing for someone who travelled so much. “Dibs on the shower, by the way, it’s a safety hazard going in after you’ve been oiling your automail and anyway I need to make sure this bed won’t collapse and break our necks in the middle of the night if I expand it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #yap yap yap ed #like we hadn't noticed that most of the rooms he and al stayed in had two beds despite al not needing one


	44. PROMPTS, #1: fool’s gold [roy, elrics]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Elrics are gold, through and through, and Roy’s not just saying that because of their looks.
> 
> +
> 
> This is how he ends up flame-destroying reports at three in the morning, every single scrap that so much as mentions gold in a mining town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this and the next few chapters (along with [wrath!riza](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26323462) and… uh, [promised day bad end au](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26445583)) are the various results of prompts 
> 
> my answers to these have ranged from full-length fics (hence the two above) to combination outline/snippets to more rambly answers, some with two (2) takes on the same prompt. so it's gonna get...... a little messy, but either way i'm archiving them all here before they get buried in my tumblr
> 
> full steam ahead!!

**PROMPT** : fool’s gold

* * *

TAKE ONE  
a terribly pretentious roy introspective fic

The Elrics are gold, through and through, and Roy’s not just saying that because of their looks. There’s a precious earnestness to them; it’s what had drawn people to them even when Al had been an hollow suit of armour and Ed a short beansprout who yelled at anything that moved (not that the latter has stopped being true).

Roy is the complete opposite. Fool’s gold, and it’s right there in the name – pyrite has many actual uses in industry, in chemical and firearms production, but it can’t pretend to be gold unless someone’s looking.

* * *

TAKE TWO  
a 5+1 fic about the times ed (or al on his behalf) has cheerfully flouted the Thou Shalt Not Make Gold rule

  * highlights include: youswell, obviously. 



Roy makes it his job to know things. He goes to considerable lengths to disguise this but it’s what he’s _really_ good at, flame alchemy aside. 

But in the case of Fullmetal – more specifically in the case of Fullmetal _and_ Youswell – Roy mostly wishes he could unknow things. 

This is how he ends up flame-destroying reports at three in the morning, every single scrap that so much as mentions gold in a mining town. (It doesn’t _actually_ help in any way he’d like it to, but his murder urges have to go somewhere.)

  * that one time he had to inform ed that no, it _doesn’t matter_ even if you _don’t_ intend to ruin the economy!! you are not allowed to do this by actual law!! not even just for the sake of proving you can!! 



“Please.” Ed rolls his eyes. “I already proved that much way long ago – _before_ I got this fancy dog tag, don’t you even start, I just wanted to see if the process could be streamlined. It’s for science,” he adds, like that justifies anything besides the grade-three headache building behind Roy’s eyes.

  * that other time roy gets caught up in the elrics’ post-canon out-of-country shenanigans and can’t blatantly use his ignition gloves because the flame alchemist is Really Not Supposed To Be Here, and. well.



“Ah,” Al says when Roy shows him the scribbled note Ed had tossed at him earlier before running off again. He hadn’t made out anything beyond a hastily-drawn circle, there hadn’t been _time_ , but of course Al understands it in the space of seconds. “He’s right, there’s a lot of iron and sulphur in the area – ah, pyrite-based explosive charges, of course.” 

Roy blanches; thanks to Al’s helpful translation he now knows that he’s basically holding the Elric equivalent of demolition plans. _Explosive_ ones.

Al is still smiling. “Cheer up, General. This way no one will ever guess that you were here.”

  * and the +1 time ed Did Not mess around was with winry’s wedding ring, of course



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you know that pyrite aka fool’s gold apparently derives from greek for “stone which strikes fire”? and that it was used as an ignition source in early firearms? yeah


	45. PROMPTS, #2: au [roy, hughes]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy forces enough air into his lungs to get the words out. “You’re _dead_.” 

**PROMPT** : hughes lives AU

* * *

Roy forces enough air into his lungs to get the words out. “You’re _dead._ ” 

“Is that how you greet all your friends, Roy?” Hughes – the thing that _can’t_ be Hughes asks, and the worst of it is that his laugh still sounds the same, for all that he’s dressed in black from head to toe. “You’re lucky I like you. Or at least I want your little world domination plan to succeed. Same thing, really.”

(Hughes’ wardrobe had gone to colours where Roy’s had gone black and white, after Ishval; _I don’t have any right to mourn_ he’d said, not laughing, and then he was dead and Roy had mourned.)

Riza’s presence at his back is the only thing that grounds him; shocked enough that Roy can be certain that he hadn’t somehow _imagined_ the nightmare of his friend’s death, that he hadn’t tried to transmute him alive again and done it _wrong_ because she would have sooner shot him dead anyway. “Who are you?”

“Oh, isn’t it obvious? I’d have thought you of all people would be able to figure it out – you’re hardly innocent of it anyway.” Hughes’ face smiles. “Pride might’ve been more fitting, I suppose, but that spot’s taken so here I am. Name’s Greed, by the way. Nice meetin’ ya, Colonel Mustang, this guy in here won’t shut up about you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #well :) #he's alive i guess :) 
> 
> [further thoughts here](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/628756949855600640/i-cant-decide-if-hughes-would-be-wary-of-giving)


	46. PROMPTS, #3: pranks [al, roy, riza]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve never asked my opinion before submitting to any journals before, though. What makes this one different?”
> 
> Alphonse flaps a hand. “Oh, because it’s complete bullshit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### 🚨 IMPORTANT NOTE ⚠️
> 
> there is **ARCHIVE WARNING CONTENT** in take two of this chapter!! feel free to skip it and scroll right past

**PROMPT** : Al pulling pranks

* * *

TAKE ONE **  
** the one where alphonse v predatory journals

“Well, yes – the paper seems sound overall, Al,” Riza hears the General say after fifteen minutes of flicking pages with more focus than he usually gives most paperwork, and the only reason she’d allowed the distraction was because it’d been Alphonse asking and because alchemical research _is_ technically within Mustang’s duties anyway. “You’ve never asked my opinion before submitting to any journals before, though. What makes this one different?”

Alphonse flaps a hand. “Oh, because it’s complete bullshit.”

“Wha– _which_ part of it!?” Mustang splutters while Havoc and Breda are still busy doing double-takes at the novelty of Alphonse swearing. “And what did you make me read it for then!”

“I needed to know whether it’d look plausible even to a skilled alchemist at a brief glance, and you were the nearest available test subject. Sorry,” Alphonse adds, cheerful and considerably less than sincere. (Riza will solemnly deny until her last breath how much she enjoys seeing the tables getting turned on Roy Mustang.) “It’s the alum rune of the circle in figure 3, by the way – the entire reaction doesn’t work unless it’s reversed, but reversing it also would break all the subsequent energy calculations. It ends up being several times _less_ efficient than the existing Littman process, actually, and terribly finicky to handle too.”

“Which is the complete opposite of your conclusion here, of course,” Mustang says blankly, having flipped back to glare at the offending diagram. “But _why?_ ”

“That one’s for submission to Journal of Alchemical Studies. _This_ one, on the other hand,” and here Alphonse brandishes a different sheaf of paper, “is a paper for Applied Alchemy demonstrating that it’s impossible in practice to design anything more efficient than the Littman, and an accompanying letter to the editor discussing the dangers of journals that fail to conduct thorough peer reviews, especially for submissions by authors of some repute.”

(Riza snorts silently into her incident report. Her contact with alchemical journals is mostly limited to including subscription fees in their team’s annual budget and shifting the occasional stack of issues around on General Mustang’s desk to make space for his actual paperwork, but even she feels fairly certain that’s about equivalent to calling her aim _somewhat_ accurate.)

“That’s… dedicated,” Mustang finishes, looking much like he’d rather have said _diabolical_ instead. Except that’d be hypocritical, because Riza can recall at least two separate occasions he’d employed eerily similar tactics, and that’s just off the top of her head.

“What can I say, I take bad research ethics personally. At least I’m not taking a hatchet directly to their editors,” Alphonse replies with shark-toothed equanimity. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure Brother doesn’t _actually_ do it. Could I beg two manila envelopes off you, Colonel Hawkeye? We’re fresh out of them at our place, Winry used the last one sending those automail schematics to Lan Fan. I’ll return them as soon as we get some more.”

“Second cabinet on your right, top drawer,” Riza answers smoothly. “Don’t worry about returning anything, I’ll just charge them to General Mustang’s research account – it’s practically a public service and he barely uses it anyway. Do you need stamps as well?”

* * *

TAKE TWO  
the one where Angst

It’s too quiet – deathly silence all around him and Ed _hates_ it. Only libraries should be this quiet, especially when Winry’s standing beside him, clutching his hand so tight Ed can almost hear the phantom creak of metal from his fingers, and _now would be a good time to say you’ve finally pulled one over me, Al_ he says, or thinks he says, except the words don’t quite make it out to air.

The grave before him remains silent anyway.


	47. PROMPTS, #4: c a t [al, ed]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But insofar as he’d thought about it – and he definitely had, there really aren’t many things he hasn’t pondered in considerable detail between all the time when he’d been awake and Ed wasn’t – Al had assumed quite logically that _he’d_ be the one bringing said cat (or cats) home. 

**PROMPT:** ed finally says yes to a cat

* * *

So. 

Even the thought itself is a disservice to felines everywhere and Al is sorry to admit it, but when he’d considered the things he wanted to do when (it was always _when_ ) he got his body back, getting to finally keep a cat hadn’t been very high on his list of priorities.

But insofar as he’d thought about it – and he definitely had, there really aren’t many things he hasn’t pondered in considerable detail between all the time when he’d been awake and Ed wasn’t – Al had assumed quite logically that _he’d_ be the one bringing said cat (or cat _s_ ) home. 

Maybe not soon at all, because it’d be unfair to get a new pet while they were both meant to be focusing on their recovery, but eventually he’d hear meowing from a dumpster, or find a box of kittens out in the rain, and then that would be that. Ed would pitch a minor fit over it, because his brother likes pretending at hard-heartedness for all that it never fools anyone, but as long as Al got Winry and maybe Den on his side it’d be fine. They’d probably even be staying put in one place by then, so Ed’s standby excuse wouldn’t work, though Al doesn’t rule out Ed proceeding to have a crisis over the fact that accepting a pet meant the Rockbell house was their home now.

(…Al’s had a _lot_ of time to think, okay. The mysteries of alchemy and-or the universe can only provide that much entertainment at three in every morning.)

Suffice to say, then, that Al isn’t expecting what he sees when the front door opens to the accompaniment of deafening thunder and Den’s bark.

Ed blows into the house along with what feels like half the storm and a colossal sneeze. “Ugh, god, I forgot how much summer rain sucks outside of the city. They’re not back yet?”

“Winry just called, she and Granny are done with the house call but they’re waiting until this lets up a bit,” Al answers – on automatic, because most of his attention is zeroed in on the lumpy shape under Ed’s coat. “What’ve you got there?”

“Cat,” Ed answers shortly. 

Al raises an eyebrow. “Very enlightening, Brother.”

“Shut _up_. I just found this little–” (Al mentally bleeps out the intervening word) “–going at it with a pack of dogs thrice its size over at the edge of old Tremaine’s property. Nearly scared them off, too, and then the sky decided to unplug the celestial bathtub and they all scattered anyway. Dunno if it got injured, but here.” Ed unceremoniously drops his equally rain-sodden passenger in Al’s arms and drips his way off to the bathroom. “Do your – whatever, cat thing. I’m gonna go boil myself until I turn red as a lobster.”

“Try not to _actually_ get burned, I’m sending Den in to rescue you if you’re not out in thirty minutes,” Al calls out after him, though he’ll be the first to admit that it’s not terribly cutting since most of his higher mental faculties are currently occupied by cat proximity. “Little, are you?”

The cat – _Ed’s_ cat – yowls in response, equal parts indignant and belligerent, then proceeds to eye Den like it hasn’t had enough fighting for the day. 

Al nods sagely, heading for the linen cupboard. “I see the resemblance. Come on, let’s get you dry before you start sneezing too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #al only bleeped out the word because it is Sacrilegious to Swear At Cats Brother #so there
> 
> you: ed finally lets al keep a cat  
> me pulling an entire deck of uno reverse cards: HA


	48. PROMPTS, #5: the macarthur-forrest process [ed, al, winry]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _winry’s gonna like this,_ al says. 
> 
> _finish your damn sandwich,_ ed says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one actually started out being an outline-answer thing rather than actual fic but morphed halfway through?? it's what happens when i apply Wikipedia to Fic, apparently
> 
> ALSO there is no death nor doom in this chapter despite what the prompt might usually imply

**PROMPT:** ingredients: two teaspoons of cyanide

> did you know that cyanide (or rather aqueous solutions thereof) is apparently fairly commonly used for extracting gold from low-grade ore? it’s called gold cyanidation aka the macarthur-forrest process, and obviously it’s pretty damn controversial on account of cyanide being, y’know, Actual Poison and all that.
> 
> on the other hand, amestris has (a) not historically given a shit about the well-being of its citizens, (b) an economy that sufficiently prizes gold to make up 1/3 of the Official State Alchemist Rulebook™️, and (c) ~~xenotime~~ towns thirsty for gold. so unless they invented a different industrial process that’s just as cheap and effective, it’s very plausible that they use cyanide too. especially since i don’t think we really see a lot of research going on in canon that isn’t state-funded slash alchemy-related, and for obvious reasons no alchemists (much less state alchemists) are gonna want to even be _seen_ messing around with gold production.
> 
> enter the elrics, who – after learning about this issue from the metal suppliers at rush valley – overhaul the whole gold extraction process to be cyanide-free over one far-too-long train ride, half a small notebook’s worth of paper alchemised into one large sheet (al’s doing), and like twelve sandwiches (mostly ed’s doing). somewhere between sandwiches eight and ten they have a galaxy brain moment about how to channel some of the waste energy back into the array via a feedback loop, so it’ll only need to be reactivated by an alchemist maybe once every few months depending on the volume of production. 
> 
> _winry’s gonna like this_ , al says. 
> 
> _finish your damn sandwich,_ ed says.
> 
> and then they reach resembool and winry whacks them both not-very-gently upside the head for making the array output gold in the form of Solid Gold Bars. which are great for being rich!! and taking over mining towns!!! but less great for automail mechanics wanting to use it for corrosion-resistant circuitry. or electromagnetic shielding.
> 
> _this is what happens when i’m not around to stop you two from thinking like alchemists_ , winry grumbles at them both, serving apple pie topped with an hour-long lecture on the most useful forms of gold as an engineering material. ed pretends to fall asleep sometime around when she embarks on the potential merits of titanium-gold alloy. they pretend not to see him doodling modifications to the array as she speaks. none of them actually notice den stealing the last crumbs of pie crust off the plate.
> 
> they name it the rockbell-elric process and refuse to patent it. 
> 
> al goes around helping to set things up especially at the smaller mines, and leaves his forwarding address in those cases where there aren’t any local alchemists available. (his offer to bring the process to xing was met with a very politely-worded request from crown price ling yao to Not destabilise the nation’s economy until i’m actually the emperor, thankyouverymuch. al frames the letter up after he recovers from the stitch in his side from laughing.)
> 
> ed hangs around atelier garfiel when he’s in town and glares at anyone who asks after the array until he’s convinced they’re not wanting it for nefarious purposes. (or, in one particular case, until that guy basically leered that they _had_ to be using some kind of philosopher’s stone in the array. ed punched him with his no-longer-metal arm and made sure it hurt anyway.) 
> 
> winry fields the technical questions and gleefully watches rush valley lose their collective shit at how much _better_ the quality of the gold has gotten, and the fact that they can skip a lot of the really tedious metalworking steps because it already comes in a usable form. most of the locals also drop the elric from the name, as in _it’s the rockbell process, of course it’s good._ (winry goes completely red when she first hears this, and paninya never ever lets her live it down.)
> 
> everyone is happy. including mustang, who is _ecstatic_ that ed is 500% retired from state alchemistdom and therefore no one has to figure out if this breaks the rule against making gold. the end. 


	49. PROMPTS, #6: the odds and ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’d be awkward if they ended up having to throw themselves out for high treason or something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's really the miscellaneous bucket labelled "all the ones i did in purely answer-outline form"
> 
> bASICALLY don't expect any proper prose(tm) here

**PROMPT:** My Lawyer Made Me Change the Title of This Fic

> this is absolutely the fic where the military has to come up with a plausible explanation for everyone taking a quick death on the promised day without (a) mentioning anything factual about the entire plot ~~of the series~~ to fry up some godhood with a side of ketchup, (b) freaking out every single person in amestris, (c) letting _any_ of their neighbouring countries think it’s a fine time to Attack,
> 
> and also without (d) getting the entire draft explanation thrown out by the legal department* of the military.
> 
> which happens multiple times. 
> 
> everyone gets increasingly desperate in cobbling together fictional events that don’t directly smear the bradley administration and all previous ones by association, because amestris has some… pretty severe laws against political libel and defamation for obvious reasons (it’s part of why the blatant warmongering continued unremarked for this long) that grumman’s proto-government can’t directly overturn just yet. and it’d be awkward if they ended up having to throw themselves out for high treason or something. 
> 
> the fourth wall may or may not be broken at some point. the xing contingent laughs their way out of the country, which is xingese for “we stopped tiptoeing around that shit at about the same time we decided to make the succession a hundred-corner bring-your-own-weapon fight, good luck with that”
> 
> [*by ‘department’ i may or may not mean a slightly-larger broom cupboard of an office staffed mostly by second lieutenant janice flynn, who is regretting the fact that she once thought it’d be fun to take a part-time law degree at Central U, and that she _then_ thought that it’d also be fun and not at all backbreaking work to accept the position of part-time legal person when it was offered to her. 
> 
> and the thing is, that’s even been _true_ until now? like, the military has weirdly few law-related things that need doing despite effectively being the government of amestris. (and yes that probably doesn’t bode very well for anything, but if she’d cared about politics at all she wouldn’t still be a 2nd lt.) 
> 
> mostly she gets called in for things like reviewing peace treaties that never actually get signed anyway – the only _really_ exciting development had been that time with the fullmetal alchemist when HR had made her double check that there really weren’t any policies against enlisting a kid. (the answer had been no, which was again concerning in a non-immediate way.)
> 
> and then the coup happens.]

* * *

**PROMPT:** A-teaches-B-to-fight 

> consider roy mustang right after the promised day. he wouldn’t have had the time to practice any alchemy whatsoever, in between getting stabbed and hospitalised/being blind for however long until marcoh heals him/starting the reconstruction of ishval/trying to install his bff’s grandpa as the supreme leader of amestris, etc etc. y’know. just world domination stuff.
> 
> and so he spends at least a couple months doing absolutely 0 alchemy, and that in combination with all the gate-given McKnowledge rattling around in his brain… it’s actually quite possible that his control over alchemy wouldn’t be as good as before. not great news for someone who literally specialises in fire, though of course he could always go back to snapping – oh yeah, right, nerve damage via sword. not fun.
> 
> ANYWAY what i’m getting to here is that roy ends up needing to get better again at alchemy, regain his previous precision with flame alchemy now via clapping, and he hasn’t got time to spare for trial and error. the logical solution, obviously, is to seek out a teacher who’s already known for _absolutely bloody terrifying efficiency._
> 
> aka izumi “quit the damn military already” curtis.
> 
> (at this point things promptly take a hard left turn into “A repeatedly almost murders B in the name of teaching lessons” story)

* * *

**PROMPT:** coffeeshop AU

> y’know what would be fun? 
> 
> the trials and tribulations of rachel jones, barista at the cafe closest to* central command. right now she’s in second place on the leaderboard of The Game, which is more colloquially known among the staff as “guess what flavour of military this customer is by their coffee order, bonus points for state alchemists, and _no_ danvers it is _cheating_ if you go by their stars/pocketwatch/whatever else instead, we have Professional Pride to uphold”
> 
> also there are horror stories of the one time someone tried to swap out the fullmetal alchemist’s drink order for his own good (“wHO ARE YOU CALLING SO STUNTED I HAVE TO STICK TO DECAF!? AND **_MILK??!!?_** ”)
> 
> [*this is not actually a unique distinction; central command is literally a _massive_ behemoth of a complex with several exits of different sizes, and therefore there are at least two other coffeeshops who could technically fight for claim to this title.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #but ed also helped them fix the espresso machine once when it got stuck so they're even #turns out automail is handy for avoiding steam burns via coffee press


	50. [al, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed rounds on him with a distinctly non-fussing face. “ _What_ did you just say.”

It’s not the first thing he says to Ed upon getting his body back, or even the tenth. 

Probably somewhere around the hundredths, give or take the approximately half-dozen repetitions of _I’m really fine, Brother, now stop fussing and let the medics take a look at your arm._

Anyway. Al’s brain-to-mouth filter feels about exhausted and wrung-out at the rest of him, and if anyone asks he will insist that’s the main reason why he lets the words slip instead of just thinking them. “Y’know, you really aren’t that tall, Brother.”

Ed rounds on him with a distinctly non-fussing face. “ _What_ did you just say.”

In for a cenz, in for a hundred, Al figures. “Well, I’ve been having to re-evaluate the heights of most people we know – it’s kinda hard to judge accurately from seven feet up, see. Even Sergeant Fuery is slightly taller than I estimated him to be.”

(Does Major Armstrong ever have the same problem? Probably not; Al imagines that seeing most people from the proverbial bird’s eye view is much less of an issue when you’d grown into the height rather than gaining it overnight.)

“And your conclusion.” The volume of teeth-grinding is frankly concerning; Al’s jaw twinges in sympathy. “Is that I’m the only one. Who’s _shorter_ than you thought I was?”

It’s terribly exciting, being able to shrug freely without armour clanking loud enough to wake half the neighbourhood, so Al does it. “To be fair, I also thought Colonel Mustang was at least half a head taller.”

Admittedly that probably says more about the circumstances in which they’d first met the Colonel than anything else, but that’s definitely not the reason for Ed’s scowl. “Like _that’s_ any fuckin’ consolation.”


	51. [hohenheim; pre-canon]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _just because you’re immortal doesn’t mean you can’t die from food poisoning, young man._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> archiving this because it entertained me. aka: anon asked my thoughts on "hohenheim's path to becoming trisha's husband after the fall of xerxes", but instead of anything sensible, this is what my brain came up with

_you need to find someone,_ says helen who had run the best cheese shop in the capital, who’s known hohenheim since he was a nameless slave running errands for his master (and afterwards when he was of age and status enough to show photographs of her daughters to). _i don’t care if it’s a wife, a husband, or anyone at all, as long as they can cook better than you can._

_which really wouldn’t be difficult in the least,_ observes gerard, who’d worked at the library in the westernmost reaches of xerxes that hohenheim had always meant to visit someday, _even if this… xingese cuisine, did you say it was?… is something of an acquired taste._

_that’s one way of putting it,_ helen sniffs dubiously, in the way of someone who decidedly mistrusts any cooking without cheese. _just because you’re immortal doesn’t mean you can’t die from food poisoning, young man._

hohenheim does not quibble over the erroneous interpretation of immortality, because that would be… kind of rude, given the audience. instead he protests: _i’m a century older than either of you ever were._

helen tuts in clear disagreement. _tell me that again when you can prepare a full meal for yourself without setting anything on fire._

_or resorting to alchemy!_ gerard cackles. 

(hohenheim does not sigh aloud, lest the restaurant proprietor think that the sage of the west dislikes their food, but oh boy does he ever want to.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hohenheim, probably: dark google how do i put my philosopher's stone on mute


	52. EDWEEN PROMPT #1: pumpkin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When you said to come visit you in Rush Valley this is _not what I was expecting!_ ” Ed has to yell to be heard over the din. It’s worse than that bazaar in Xing which he’s still mostly convinced Ling had only brought him to as a prank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as it says on the tin: for prompt 1 of edween 2020, aka pumpkin! with the obvious caveat that this isn't really shippy because i'm incapable of that lmao

“When you said to come visit you in Rush Valley this is _not what I was expecting!_ ” Ed has to yell to be heard over the din. It’s worse than that bazaar in Xing which he’s still mostly convinced Ling had only brought him to as a prank.

Winry apparently sees no problem with this, because she just yells back. “Well how was I supposed to know that _you’d_ be arriving at Halloween? Weren’t you supposed to be back from Creta one month ago!”

“Hello-who? And I can’t help that there were like two separate international incidents – which I mostly helped to solve, _not_ cause, before you say anything.”

Winry graces him with brief skepticism before her expression melts into a grin, and she slows down so Ed can actually walk beside her instead of being dragged along. “At least Major Hawkeye didn’t have to pay your ransom this time, so that’s improvement.”

She dodges out the way of Ed’s elbow jab, and Ed grumbles. “That was _one_ time, General Lazyass was half the reason I even got into that mess, and anyway they already laughed at me over it the last time I was in Central.”

“Did they now?” The light dancing in her eyes is about as cheerfully unholy as the mechanical bats – _bats!?_ – flapping their wings on the rooftops around them, and Ed still has absolutely no fucking idea what festival he’s walked in on, but he’s pretty sure Rush Valley has taken it to technical extremes either way.

“Yeah. Y’know, the thing where Hawkeye doesn’t twitch a muscle and Mustang keeps talking all stern but you can tell they’re cracking up inside?”

“Yeah,” Winry agrees, serious, like he can’t tell _she’s_ snickering silently too. But any complaint he’d been about to make is derailed by her next words. “Luckily, that means you’re just in time to be my opponent for this year’s carve-off!”

Ed feels his brain stutter: _blip, blip, bloop_. “Carve- _what_.”

How does Rush Valley manage to still be one of the strangest places in all the countries he’s travelled? Is it something in the water here? Would a valley full of alchemists be just as weird?

…never mind that last one, actually. It would’ve imploded first. 

“Pumpkins, duh,” Winry says breezily, like it was something you could take for granted in a community with scarily sharp surgical tools and few qualms about applying them. “It gets messy real quick, so the judging’s always done two by two.”

“And so you conveniently signed me up?”

“Paninya got a lifelong ban after she blasted a pumpkin with her leg cannon, see. Which reminds me – no alchemy for you either!”

Ed splutters his way out of pumpkin gargoyle imaginings. “And _why not!?_ ”

“Do you want a repeat of That Incident?”

“You’re gonna have to be a _bit more specific_ –”

“–yeah, that time when we had to spend three hours cleaning tomato guts off the kitchen cupboards because you thought you could alchemise your way out of cutting vegetables for the stew!”

“That was…” Ed wisely swings his mouth shut before he can say _only because the onions made me tear up and lose focus_ , but from Winry’s look she knows full well anyway.

Though she at least lets it pass, jabbing his chest with a finger. “And if it’s against you, it’s either my skill or my automail, so I win both ways!”

Yep, that glee is _definitely_ reaching unholy levels. “Putting the win in this Hallo-whatever thing, huh,” he sighs theatrically, but lets her drag him off into the crowd anyway.

There probably were worse ways to make up for being one month late, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #also i guess this is one of those ambiguous worlds where he keeps both automail arm and alchemy post-canon #look i had to have it for the sake of the lolz!! pumpkin guts getting transmuted everywhere!!


	53. EDWEEN PROMPT #2: magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winry’s almost done packing her supplies back into their emergency bag (and jeez, only _Ed_ would manage to make it necessary to keep a kit on hand for actual minor-to-major catastrophes during a semi-honeymoon trip) when she feels a tug on the bottom of her coat.

Winry’s almost done packing her supplies back into their emergency bag (and jeez, only _Ed_ would manage to make it necessary to keep a kit on hand for actual minor-to-major catastrophes during a semi-honeymoon trip) when she feels a tug on the bottom of her coat.

She tucks the last roll of bandages away and looks down to find a small girl staring up at her with wide eyes. 

Mixed ancestry, Winry tentatively guesses, though she doesn’t become certain of it until the girl starts talking – in Amestrian, thankfully, because Winry hasn’t learned Ed’s knack for absorbing new languages like an aggressive sponge.

“Miss? Can ask you something?” The words are uncertain and halting, but more clearly enunciated than most of the Amestrian speakers they’ve met in Drachma so far; Winry chalks it up to possibly having one mostly-Amestrian parent.

She latches the bag closed before crouching down to the girl’s eye level, which also lets her do a quick once-over for injuries. “Are you hurt?” she asks, repeating it in Drachman for good measure. (It’d been one of the two dozen phrases she’d made Ed and Al teach her in every language and dialect they picked up while travelling, especially now that Rush Valley was seeing more and more visitors from abroad.)

The girl shakes her head, and Winry smiles in relief. She hadn’t _looked_ injured, either, but fur coats could hide many things, never mind that it wasn’t even properly winter yet. 

“You know he?” the girl asks, increasingly confident now, and Winry follows her pointed finger to see a figure in red – Ed standing near the wall he’d transmuted earlier to divert most of the avalanche around the town, in the middle of a surprisingly spirited discussion with several of the townspeople.

From the looks of it the talk is either about any other stopgap measures they could put in place while waiting for official help to arrive, or about fighting bears barehanded in the mountains. 

It’s hard to tell; Ed’s clearly very into the topic, judging from the enthusiasm with which he’s flinging gestures around, but then again both of those options _would_ excite him anyway.

Nerd. Winry can’t help the fond sigh. 

He looks over then, an eyebrow-raised wave – _need help?_ – and Winry shakes her head and smiles an _okay_ back at him before looking back down again.

“Yes, I know him,” she tells her inquisitive visitor, who brightens visibly.

“That…” she trails off for a moment, fumbling for words, before just cutting to the chase and clapping her hands together with a _whoof_ of thick gloves. “Is magic?”

“Magic?” Winry echoes, half-dumbfounded and half-bemused, because – yeah, she can totally see how the transmutation might’ve looked that way, to anyone who wasn’t used to Ed saving the day on the way to lunch. 

…and that thought in turn brings her up short, because alchemy _hadn’t_ been one of the words she’d asked Ed for. Does Drachman even have a word for alchemy? Alchemists don’t seem that common here, not like in Amestris and not the way Al had described the alkahestrists in Xing, though she’s vaguely aware that Drachman does have words loaned from Amestrian (like _automail_ , for starters). Maybe this is one too?

“It’s alchemy…?” Winry hazards, but the girl only blinks back in confusion; clearly she hasn’t had reason to learn this word in Amestrian, and if there’s a Drachman term for it, it’s not close enough to ring a bell either. 

Dammit. Maybe she really _should_ have called Ed over.

“Um.” Winry flounders for a moment before deciding to go with it anyway. “A bit like magic?”

“Magic!” the girl cheers.

………which is when Winry remembers that the only reason they’d gotten permission to even come to Drachma was by swearing up and down that Ed is visiting purely as a civilian, not as a military-contracted once-state alchemist, and this might’ve been justifiable as a literal emergency but if rumours of some strange magic-using Amestrian start making the rounds, she’s pretty sure General Armstrong will _personally_ make blades out of the peace-treaty-in-progress and challenge them to a sword fight on the spot. 

And Ed might totally be keen to take up that gauntlet, but Winry definitely _isn’t_ , thank you very much.

“But keep it secret, okay?” she adds post-haste, pressing one gloved finger to her lips in what she _hopes_ is a universal gesture. 

The girl giggles and nods, but from the way she claps her hands together again as she runs away, Winry isn’t terribly optimistic about the news not getting around.

Oh well. At least she tried.

(“And so we probably need to call Colonel Miles and ask him what would make a good apology present for General Armstrong,” Winry concludes when she’s recounting this to Ed over their belated lunch.

“Just send her a pumpkin. Fill it with flowers or somethin’,” Ed says around a forkful of food, waving a careless hand. “Festive greetings courtesy of the reigning carve-off champion.”

Winry snickers despite herself at the horrifying mental image. “Not technically, since we’re not participating this year.”

“What d’you m– oh damn, it’s the end of October already? I hadn’t even realised,” he mumbles, chewing contemplatively as he looks at the snow all around them. “What if I sent them a pumpkin made of ice? That’s gotta score some bonus points for cool.”

…not an intentional pun, Winry judges, so she lets it slide. “It’d melt even before it got halfway to Rush Valley.”

Ed’s grin gains a dangerous and foreboding edge. “Eh, I’ll figure something out.” 

That _be right back, gotta go the library and break the laws of the universe_ tone, on the other hand, is definitely intentional. “I’d better not wake up to pumpkins everywhere around that cottage we’re renting, it’ll scare the neighbours.”

“I’m offended you think I’d go for quantity over quality, Win. Really. It wounds me,” he laments, never mind that it doesn’t work at all with that maniacal look still on his face, and Winry resigns herself to the inevitable with a sigh.

Nerd. She loved him for it anyway.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with apologies to fantasy russia for any gross inaccuracies because i Know Nothing but also
> 
> #ed transmuting a ten foot tall snowman topped with a pumpkin head #*it melts after he puts candles inside trying to make it ~romantic~* ed: fuck. didn't think this through


	54. PROMPTS, #7: ed, al [bad idea au, pt. 3]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The worst thing about this is that it’s not even equivalent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, this and the next few instalments are the results of prompts on my tumblr. mostly(?) in short fic form this time because my brain refuses to focus for anything longer rn, but i actually haven't finished filling them yet so who knows
> 
> in this part: a prompt for more of the [bad](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006/chapters/57493321) [idea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006/chapters/57540283) au, aka chimera!al

The worst thing about this is that it’s not even equivalent. 

That’s not actually true, not when there are so many contenders for the top fucking spot – the calmness with which Al’s taking this, the way Ed wants to yell at and thank Lieutenant Hawkeye for her constructed reports but either and both are stuck in his throat anyway, the way that Nina had waved _bye, brother, you take care of Alexander okay?_ and Al hadn’t even said anything, only softly whuffed and licked Nina’s face until she was laughing too hard to see the choked glimmer in Ed’s eyes anyway.

It’s far from the worst, but Ed knows for certain that he’ll lose whatever little sensibility he has left if he lets himself think about any of that for than a moment, and raging at the inequivalency of the universe is something that Ed’s had years’ worth of practice in doing since the day Truth decided to play Drachman roulette with his limbs so he does that instead.

Because the road back to their real bodies had just gotten that much longer, that much more complicated, and for what? Yes, it’ll be easier to safely separate Al’s soul from this body than if it’d been Nina or any other human, because none of it had been physically _his_ to begin with anyway – and? Is that supposed to be some kind of nightmarishly lousy _comfort_? Reducing the problem back to the same one they’d had before? This isn’t mathematics. Al’s existence isn’t a subtraction that _anyone’s_ allowed to make, and Tucker is _very damned lucky_ Scar had gotten to him already because he wouldn’t have liked what would’ve been waiting for him instead and Ed wouldn’t even be sorry for _any_ of it.

(“Nina’s alive, brother. That’s not nothing,” Al says, breath warm in a way that he’d almost forgotten, and it’s _everything_ and Ed hates it miserably. “We’ll just have to figure this out, okay? Together.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (by the by, i've also previously elaborated on my further thoughts for this au [here](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/627335770189037568/any-more-planned-for-your-alchimera-fics-that), which contains more crack than you might expect)


	55. PROMPTS, #8: riza, ed, al [modern au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riza’s always known that Ed hates that term but not like this, absolutely wretched like it’s being forced from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: modern au 
> 
> (but probably not in the way you were expecting)

“You asked, didn’t you? How I could’ve made an – _artificial intelligence_ – ” (and Riza’s always known that Ed hates that term but not like this, absolutely wretched like it’s being forced from him) “ – that’s this lifelike. This real.”

It’s no pretty sight, but Riza’s looked down worse and walked away after, so she doesn’t let her composure even shift as she replies. “I was asking on the Colonel’s behalf, but yes. I did.”

That at least snaps Ed’s expression out of its dim shadows and back into something more familiar, chin jutting out like he’s picking a fight. “You wanna know why? The _real_ reason, not the quantum bullshit I fed Mustang.”

…she’s fairly certain that all two-and-one of them know that the Colonel hadn’t actually bought any of said drivel, only shaped it up to pass as an official explanation. Not that Riza would’ve said anything about it either way, but even if she’d wanted to the taut pause is broken first by the bank of speakers behind Ed.

“Ed.” The soft whirr of the servers makes it sound like a sigh. “Are you quite sure?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you damn well know I don’t do anything without being two hundred bloody percent certain,” Ed snaps back, and Riza gets the feeling that if not for her presence he’d have rounded on the nearest monitor to glare – but she _is_ here, so he doesn’t budge a step. “You looked me up, right? Back during the recruitment. Privacy whatever, you’re both too detail-obsessed to have not done that.”

It’s the most generous assessment of Colonel Mustang that she’s ever heard from Ed, but that’s neither here nor there. “The Colonel asked Hughes to do a background check, yes.”

“‘Course he did. Why do it yourself when you can outsource,” Ed mutters, but the derision is almost brittle. “So you must know I’ve got a younger brother.”

Present tense, for someone missing-presumed-dead. Riza evens her breath further. “You’ve never said anything about him.”

“ _Never s–_ god. You really have no idea, huh.” He straightens back up, as if from the physical impact of her words landing. “It’s not that complicated, really. Al seems this human because he _is_ human. He didn’t go missing, or die, I just fucked up so badly years ago that trapping his soul in a computer was the only way I could keep him alive.”

The blue susurrus of monitor light carves dark planes across Ed’s face, and there are three humans in this room but only two of them are breathing. “Al _is_ my brother, Lieutenant. That’s all there is to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #riza calling roy afterwards: yeah so you know how we all assumed ed named his AI after his brother? #because we thought alphonse died? and ed was traumatised? #well that last point is still correct. everything else is not #roy: excuse my language lieutenant but what the fuck happened 
> 
> also, more thoughts/cats on this verse [here](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/tagged/ai%21al-au)


	56. PROMPTS, #9: bradley family values

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Correction: worms are disgusting to everyone except Gluttony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .......ok so this one is more of a snippet, and a one needing considerable context at that, but it entertains the hell out of me so it gets archived anyway. 
> 
> frankly no summary can do the context justice, but tldr anon and i were discussing [the ridiculousness that is](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/633661556261093376/hfjdk-every-time-i-remember-that-pride-fmas-child) [the bradley household](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/633676820085112832/actually-im-so-sorry-ill-shut-up-after-this-but), during which i came to the cinematic conclusion that pride's life is basically detective conan but worse
> 
> i was then asked to elaborate on that. this was the result

**SELIM BRADLEY, A MORNING IN THE LIFE OF**

> **5:08AM** The early bird gets the worm. 
> 
> **5:09AM** Except that worms are disgusting. A more appropriate metaphor would be the early homunculus gets the coffee, without any foolish humans yammering on about how you _can’t_ have that, Master Selim, it’s not for children, yadda yadda. And just for that I won’t be leaving Wrath any. Due retribution for not having better servants.
> 
> **5:11AM** Correction: worms are disgusting to everyone except Gluttony. By the transitive property of disgrace, Gluttony is disgusting.
> 
> **5:14AM** …the butler caught me. It’s too early for this shit.
> 
> **5:22AM** Convinced him that I was bringing breakfast up to Father and Mother Dearest. It should hold, as long as he doesn’t check with the chef. 
> 
> **5:23AM** If he does, then – well, I suppose Wrath will just be down one servant or two, then. They’re hardly _difficult_ to replace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #pride gobbling up another member of staff: whoops my hand slipped #wrath: selim you've used that excuse three times this month alone #pride: are you sure? maybe your memory is slipping in your OLD AGE? #wrath: selim please. 
> 
> *youtube recommendations voice* if you liked this, then [this shitpost](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/post/634188207968403456/once-again-i-want-a-sitcom-where-riza-just-has) may also be up your alley


	57. PROMPTS, #10: ed, al, winry [the 1918 great charity bake-off]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wouldn’t you both have already heard this bit, though?” Winry asks idly, feet shoved onto Ed’s lap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one goes out to tumblr user keenmint, who gave me what were probably meant to be three separate prompts: the great amestrian bakeoff, what scar sees in his dreams, and Ed & Al’s Totally Cool, Regular Day, with No Explosions Involved, especially not when Winry’s asking
> 
> unfortunately my brain bears more than a passing resemblance to a hyperactive pingpong ball, in the sense that it saw the chance to line all of that up at once and took it

_“Dear audience, whether here or watching from the comforts of your home – it is with great pleasure suffusing every inch of my chest that I welcome you to the final showstopper of the 1918 Great Charity Bake-off, here in the heart of Amestris!”_

Ed is… not totally sure _how_ Armstrong’s voice is booming like that from the crappy speakers of Pinako’s radio, but somehow it is. Probably some heirloom family technique for bypassing ancient technology, knowing the man.

“It’s starting, Al!” Ed hollers, leaning over the back of the couch as Armstrong re-introduces the finalists, starting with the home team of military chefs from Central who only give stoically short answers in response to everything.

“I’m popping the last of the corn, be right there!” Al yells back from the kitchen, while Armstrong finally gives in to the inevitable and moves on.

 _“I shall finally exact the decisive vengeance that I have always dreamed of,”_ Scar booms right back before Armstrong can even ask, except with about three hundred degrees more of foreboding doom. _“It shall be sweet, **sweet** revenge.”_

“Wouldn’t you both have already heard this bit, though?” Winry asks idly, feet shoved onto Ed’s lap, which only works because Ed is a nice and sensible non-machine-nut who doesn’t take a screwdriver to anyone’s leg just because it’s on his lap and _then_ charge them for maintenance afterwards. “I mean, you _were_ there during the dry run for the broadcast and all.”

Scar’s still going. Ed flicks a scrunched-up ball of newspaper at the radio. “Well yeah, but we were helping with stuff, not just standing around watching, and it’s not like they’d go full-on with the baking during a rehearsal. And anyway it was pretty hard to hear anything, what with all the expl–”

He cuts himself off before he can say it, but still Winry’s attention swivels over like a hawk. Or Hawkeye. Whichever. “What was that?”

Al stops short in the kitchen doorway, holding the bowl. “Uh.”

“ _Popcorn!_ ” Ed exclaims with far too much manic cheer.

Not enough to deter Winry, apparently, because she’s now staring down both of them at once. “Did you explode something.”

“What explosion?” Al asks, eyes wide and round, at the same moment Ed says, “Not my fault! Or Al’s. And there was definitely no explosion, yeah!”

“I have Ms Riza’s number, you know,” Winry reminds them severely, like it’s _their_ fault that flour is explosive as all hell, while on air Armstrong launches into a passionately and lavishly detailed description of Scar’s plans for his teams’ showstopper piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (it's not called the amestrian bake-off because scar would 100% not participate otherwise)


	58. PROMPTS, #11: al [and his very good day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al knows from the moment he wakes up that it’s going to be a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and finally… the last of this lot for now, in response to tumblr user bluestonewings' very valid request of nice things for al

Al knows from the moment he wakes up that it’s going to be a good day.

Not that he could’ve pointed out any reason in particular even if you’d asked; it’s one of those many non-obvious things about having a body again, and therefore multiple sensory input sources aside from an audio and visual field. 

(He’d gotten awfully good at compensating for the limitation, over the years – it helped that Ed had always been around, both as a reference point and a pretty reliable indicator of when there was something going on that seeing and hearing alone couldn’t pick up on. 

Even now Al’s still wired to rely on sight and sound first before anything else, but that’s the opposite of a problem because the blues look bluer now and the reds redder, and he figures it’s just a matter of time before everything normalises again anyway, this time with some Dragon Pulse sensing thrown into the mix.)

Though of course he _can_ make a list of possible contributing factors for how his steps feel lighter today, like the buoyancy of a minor miracle: 

  * the way the air sits on his tongue, clean gossamer like there won’t be rain for miles around to scatter the sun, to make Al’s movements falter and Ed’s brows draw down in pain
  * the breakfast aromas drifting from the kitchen, with the counterpoint of a slight char and a spirited squabble that suggests something previously burnt by either Ed or Winry, or more possibly both because they’d gotten distracted arguing out the details of some invention
  * and the soft warmth against his shin as Ed’s cat (either still-unnamed or _actually_ named Cat, depending on who you ask) brushes by him on the way out the door, deigning to pause long enough that Al can lean down for a proper round of morning pats.



It’s a day for nice things, Al decides, and he’s going to make the most of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i seriously considered having al find and keep a cat in this one, but then i remembered that i [already gave ed a cat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911006/chapters/64755574) because the post-canon world is whatever i want it to be


	59. three word roulette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The real disaster comes when Ed learns how to weaponise his height.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> exactly what it says on the tin. featuring a random word generator, me, and the number three

**hallway, allow, revenge**

For all the top-decibel yelling over the years, the real disaster comes when Ed learns how to weaponise his height: nothing sums up chaos quite as well as Edward Elric standing with his arms crossed in a hallway transmuted to specifications much… vertically closer… to his own specifications and daring you to say anything about it. Even graciously allowing you to duck through is practically a revenge in itself. Roy counts himself impressed.

* * *

**me, suitcase, cry**

“Promise you’ll visit me in Xing?” Mei sniffles, fiddling with the locks of the suitcase that he’d enlisted the Rockbell girl’s help to select for maximum durability.

Xiao Mei’s eyes are also large and round and _teary_ where it sits on her shoulder, and behind _that_ he can see Marcoh very pointedly not listening as he waits for his turn to bid farewell, and–

“Please don’t cry,” Scar blurts desperately, because if she _does_ then that will set everyone off in various ways and he is so, so not equipped to deal with that.

* * *

**muggy, unanimous, agenda**

Central is hot, yes, but rarely is it hot _and_ humid like this, enough so that Riza imagines she can feel the physical and uncomfortably warm weight of water down her back.

They’ve not managed to get very far into their weekly team meeting, and honestly Mustang seems like he’d zoned out for at least half of it, abstractedly staring at the gloves laid unworn on the table like he’s seriously considering alchemising the moisture right out of the muggy air. Riza can’t even bring herself to reprimand him for the inattention.

Breda voices the thought that’s probably on most of their minds. “Maybe part of the restructuring should involve moving the central government up north. Might be the key to unanimous support.”

“I’ll put it on the agenda,” the colonel drawls, sluggishly. “Excellent tactical thought, Lieutenant.”


	60. PROMPTS, #12: ed [another bad idea au]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say the Elric house is haunted.
> 
> Of course. Empty houses are always haunted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anon prompt: au where hohenheim doesn't have a suit of armor laying around so ed has to improvise on what al is going to haunt

**i.**

They say the Elric house is haunted.

Of course. Empty houses are always haunted.

* * *

**ii.**

That’s the thing, though: the house doesn’t _feel_ empty. 

Perhaps it would be easier if it did, if there’d been nothing but a half-burned shell that children snuck into on dares no matter how many times they were warned against it.

But there’s nothing empty in the way the door shuts itself against all entry, red soulfire flickering off window glass in rainy dusks and moonless nights, the opposite of a hallowed ground that veers everyone away except a lone figure late at night, the shadows of his wheelchair stark as the ones under his eyes.

(Winry hadn’t wanted him to come alone but Ed couldn’t have borne having her here either, not with the way his voice fractures and breaks when he presses his hand against soot-gray wall and whispers _Al?_ )

* * *

**iii.**

Here’s another thing. Where does a building end and the ground begin? Perhaps the answer to this would be clearer in a city’s paved roads or the north’s floor of ice, but here in farflung Resembool home is hearth and stone, no more separate from the earth than air from lungs. 

One is all and all is one. The boundaries of things are not entirely in the eye of the beholder but not fully detached from it either, an ambiguity that an alchemist could exploit with sufficient motivation and skill.

Alphonse Elric had been, on both counts. Desperation is a powerful motivator.

(Ed had blanched the first time he’d been cognizant enough to notice the cracks running up the walls of the Rockbell house, from when the ground beneath it had been shaken from two miles away until they noticed the conflagration catching, a beacon for help almost too far gone.

_I’ll fix it. All of it, I swear,_ he’d said, mumbled it over and over again with face still half-flushed from fever even though they hadn’t asked, and Winry wishes Al were here as much as she _doesn’t_ , because he might not be able to hurt physically now but that’s the least of it.

Granny thwacks him with the cold compress, hard enough to get through: _impatient brat. Fix yourself first._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> multiple people have yelled at me over this so i must be doing something right
> 
> 'presume do you have an obsession with the elric house that's the second time you've brought it up now' no i swear i don't it was just between this and al getting bound to a book like the world's sassiest grimoire.
> 
> also for the record this was nearly Archive Warning Applies content because like. without the armour al couldn't have carried ed and so he. uh. would've bled out most probably?? awkward


	61. PROMPTS, #13: a series of alchemical events

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the same kind of understatement as calling a renowned sniper a decent shot, with potentially just as painful consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for a sort of?? prompt thing??? from mirrorfalls

And so, Edward and Alphonse endeavoured to perform a human transmutation, a word which here means the worst mistake that a person can make in their life, even worse than introducing an already angsty child to the concept of black and leather in a wardrobe, both together and separately.

Of course, this assumes that said person is an alchemist of some ability, and that said life has been one of some loss and strife. But in the unfortunately common circumstance where both of these things are true, then it is also true – by necessity if not logic – that committing human transmutation is the single most inadvisable decision that can be made. 

This is the same kind of understatement as calling a renowned sniper a decent shot, with potentially just as painful consequences. Observations like these are what give rise to quaint little expressions like “hindsight is twenty-twenty”, the veracity of which can be brought into immediate question just by standing up and going to peer into your nearest mirror. 

If you cannot even see the back of your head, and the bullseye target that may or may not be painted there, then pray tell, of what use is hindsight?

But I digress. This is how it all begins, as things often do: with chalk, words, and a knowledge too dangerous to forbid. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #it's been too long since i read asoue but listen. fma as narrated by lemony snicket would be a bloody riot and thats the facts


	62. [riza, ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "…I'm constitutionally incapable of swearin' at you, Lieutenant, you know that," he says when his breath evens out enough to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hello here i am again with a backlog of tumblr fic to crosspost

"Are you alright? Nod for yes, swear at me for no."

Ed doesn't nod, but he at least releases the panic-tight grip he's got on her arm, so that's something. "…I'm constitutionally incapable of swearin' _at_ you, Lieutenant, you know that," he says when his breath evens out enough to speak.

"First time for everything," Riza notes with equanimity. "Also you've shown absolutely no trouble swearing in my presence."

He opens his mouth to protest, finds no viable objection, and snaps it glumly closed again.

Riza leaves him to it as she does a once-over, which confirms her initial impressions: he's not physically injured beyond light scrapes that a regular first-aid box can address anyway. "You did good out there, Edward. There's no telling how bad the situation might've gotten by the time official help arrived, if you hadn't intervened first."

Ed squints dubiously up at her. "Didn't do much though."

"Did do enough," she counters, brusque enough to make Ed snort in amusement, and there's enough colour back in his face now that she decides to broach the topic. "Though on how you could've done better – I know you don't like firearms, and I'm not asking you to use them, but as far as that's concerned there are safer ways to disarm someone that present less risk to both you and everyone around you."

It's the last part that gets him, of course, as if _he_ isn't put in danger when he forgets that his right arm isn't nigh-indestructible anymore. "Can you teach me?"

"Showing would be easier. It doesn't have to be me either – both Lieutenants Havoc and Catalina would also be able to instruct you well enough."

"I'd rather it be you," Ed admits, before snickering. "Havoc but not Mustang? Really?"

"Truly," Riza affirms. "I'll see when I can book a training room, probably sometime next week."

Ed clambers up with a nod. "'Kay. So where to now?"

"Appreciation for your heroic efforts. Have you tried that new takeout place on Charing Street? It's a bit of a detour from my flat, but I hear the gold's worth it."

"First time for everything. Especially if it's on the military's dime." Ed grins, dusting himself off briskly. "Lead the way, Lieutenant."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ed and riza, y'all


	63. fullmetal autograph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the last minute Riza replaces the autograph sheet with a piece of paperwork and dares either of you to say anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's time for a *spins roulette wheel* *cha-ching* bullet point textpost
> 
> in response to anon ask: **top 5 funniest responses the FMA cast would have to being asked for an autograph?**

  * **roy:** he agrees, flirtfully (probably not a word but i don't care). at the last minute riza replaces the autograph sheet with a piece of paperwork and dares either of you to say anything.  
  

  * **riza:** she hands you her target sheet from her latest round at the firearm range. it's all bullseye, centre mass, could hit a fly at three hundred paces. you wanted her signature, didn't you?  
  

  * **al:** will actually give you a normal autograph like a sensible person, but will then also get anyone who's with him to sign it too (or pawprint it, if it's a cat). he loves his friends and wouldn't want them to feel left out, and also it's physically impossible to tell alphonse elric no. try it. you won't succeed  
  

  * **ed:** why the fuck would you want my autograph? he says, is this some new paparazzi bullshit!? (the moral here is that telling him "uh i want you signature because you saved the country…?" is not the correct answer. no. you should just get it via alphonse instead.)  
  

  * **winry:** will only sign if you've unlocked a sufficient friendship level by talking machinery with her. unfortunately this also means she's sometimes so engrossed in the conversation that she ends up signing on an actually important blueprint and has to redraw it afterwards




	64. [riza, roy; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How fares Miss Rockbell?"
> 
> "Energetically as ever," comes the answer; Roy doesn't chance looking away from the stew he's stirring to check, but from the intervening pause he surmises Riza is jotting something down on the notepad she keeps by the phone.

"How fares Miss Rockbell?"

"Energetically as ever," comes the answer; Roy doesn't chance looking away from the stew he's stirring to check, but from the intervening pause he surmises Riza is jotting something down on the notepad she keeps by the phone. "She sends you her regards, by the way, along with a message."

The words take a moment to register. "What, for me?"

"Indeed. Though the message itself is from Alphonse, technically."

That clarifies things, but not by much. He's got more to do (at least professionally) with Al than with Winry, sure, but they haven't contracted any work out to the Elrics for months on account of them being out of the country so frequently.

Roy racks his brain for any reason Al might have to contact him, but still hasn't come up with anything by the time Riza re-enters the kitchen and establishes that he hasn't ruined dinner in her absence. "And? Suspense does ruin the appetite, you know."

Riza hums, either an acknowledgement or in consideration of an appropriate drink pairing. "They asked me to ask you to stop addressing Edward as Fullmetal. It weirds him out – Winry's words, not mine."

Some small part of his brain finds amusement in the way that the Elrics-Rockbell entity rates being referred to in the collective now (a phenomenon that Roy himself is not unfamiliar with) and the high probability that Ed's actual words had been filtered for public consumption before becoming Winry's words.

But mostly he's preoccupied with trying to recall instances of him doing that and sighing at the number of them. "I don't mean to. It's just… old habits, and all that."

Old habits that are much harder to avoid slipping back into now that his interactions with Ed are in a disconcertingly similar context to what came before. Which is to say: blowing things up (figuratively or otherwise) in the name of fixing them.

Riza adds insult to injury by reclaiming the ladle from his hand, but it's just as well – he probably wouldn't notice anything off unless it caught fire. "I know," she replies, pointing him to the utensils drawer. "I suspect they do, too."

They, probably including Ed this time, Roy thinks as he starts setting the table. "Tell her I'll keep that in mind for next time, and they're welcome to hold me accountable for it."

Envisioning an irate Winry Rockbell bringing a wrench down upon his head for every slip-up will be effective enough, judging from the way his mind actively shrinks from it, and that's not even getting to Al.

("Duly noted," Riza says, probably thinking the same thing but in greater detail, and turns off the fire. "Wine?")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #also if you're asking me: no they're not dating just six deep in qpr on the 'having homecooked dinners together' level #but it's whatevs


	65. PROMPTS, #14: riza [good hair day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riza can admit it, at least to herself: she’s been looking forward to the day when her hair finally gets long enough to – well, no longer be _short _.__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt borrowed from @dropkickwritersblock on tumblr: write a piece about someone who’s really looking forward to something getting exactly what they wanted

Riza can admit it, at least to herself: she’s been looking forward to the day when her hair finally gets long enough to – well, no longer be _short_.

It’s hardly frivolous, not by any sensible measure, but it is (or at least feels like) the first thing she’s done since Ishval that’s not for any constructive reason she can name. 

She supposes that wanting a tangible change would be reason enough, is in fact what most people will assume when they see it, but for all that it isn’t untrue it’s also not really why she decided to keep it long. 

(It’s different for the colonel, she knows, but as far as Riza herself is concerned the lack of a desert-blurred rifle scope pressed against her eye is enough to ground her in the here and now. Her demons lie elsewhere.)

She runs the brush through it one more time, lets herself get accustomed to the gentle weight of it. The length frames her face differently than it did Winry Rockbell’s, which is only to be expected, though not in a bad way; she could get used to this.

Though now that it _is_ long Riza is also realising that she doesn’t actually quite know what to do with it. She’d never kept her hair beyond chin-length even as a kid, had always been too practical for that – still is, really, only that practicality means something different these days.

Yesterday she’d tried putting it up in a ponytail like Rebecca’s, then a halfway one like Winry’s, but they’d both looked odd enough that she ended up just leaving it down anyway. It’s not long enough to be a bother, and there’s no specific dress code about this either, though you wouldn’t have known it from the way the office had jerked to a silent halt when she’d walked in yesterday, like hair turning long isn’t just the natural consequence of not cutting it. 

( _Men,_ honestly. At least Colonel Mustang had only paused to blink before promptly continuing to blather on to the room at large.)

She’ll still have to figure something out sooner or later – Riza is no General Armstrong, and has no intention of going onto any battlefield with her hair down, at least not while she’s in uniform.

But war feels further away than usual, today, and the tumble of hair around her shoulders is the furthest thing from heavy. It’ll keep, for now.


	66. [al, ed, ling; xing adventures]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Come to Xing for new year’s, he said. It’ll be fun, he said. Let me show you how a _proper_ celebration is done, he s– okay, fine, that last one is true, this has better food than almost all the festivals in Amestris, but still. Ugh.”

“Come to Xing for new year’s, he said. It’ll be fun, he said. Let me show you how a _proper_ celebration is done, he s– okay, fine, that last one is true, this has better food than almost all the festivals in Amestris, but still. Ugh. Remind me of this the next time I decide to trust Ling any further than I can throw him.”

Al diplomatically doesn’t point out that it’s a rather shorter distance these days without the automail arm. “Are you still upset about the mahjong game earlier? You _can_ have some of my winnings, you know, I don’t actually mind.”

Ed makes a disgusted sound not unlike a wet cat. “ _Please_. Like I’m gonna mooch off my younger brother when I’m an honoured guest in a foreign land.”

“Ah, so you’re just planning to freeload off Ling instead,” Al notes sagely.

Ed’s grin is toothy and completely uncaring of whether he’s single-handedly upending decades of international diplomacy. “You’re damned right I will. He still owes me a slowcooked boot.”

* * *

“What the hell _is_ that,” Ed hollers, in a tone of baffled awe contrary to what the words suggest. (The swearing is just an integral part of it, obviously.)

“Lion dance!” Ling yells back to be heard over the din, albeit muffled by the mask he definitely Did Not steal from Lan Fan’s backup supplies, because His Highness the Crown Prince is also definitely off hobnobbing with some nobles and therefore not here. “It’s loud, unironically red and gold to the point of gaudiness, and liable to stunt-grade injuries. Figured it’d be up your alley.”

“Yeah, so why the fuck were we sitting around the palace all day yesterday when I could’ve been out here learning this!?”

Ah, to be a blissfully common Amestrian. Ling can hardly imagine it. Ed doesn’t know how lucky he is that it’d only been _one_ day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many international incidents can you start in a day? no ed don't take that as a challenge
> 
> anyway yes having xing as an excuse to inflict chinese new year on edward is very entertaning to me what gave you the first clue


	67. [ed; post-promised day]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ed's almost twenty when he realises that Hawkeye must've been around his age when she was deployed to Ishval.

Ed's almost twenty when he realises that Hawkeye must've been around his age when she was deployed to Ishval.

Really, the only reason why he even knows enough to figure this out is that one time Breda and the rest had roped them into keeping Hawkeye occupied on account of Al's literal poker face, while the rest of them ran around like malfunctioning clockwork chickens trying to put together a party.

_Trying_ being the keyword. It had worked out eventually, of course, but in between all that Havoc and Fuery had spent ten solid minutes arguing about Hawkeye's age at the cake shop, until Falman appeared to declare them both wrong.

Ed's memory isn't anywhere near as infallible as his, but it's way more than enough to work backwards and figure out that Hawkeye can't have been any older than nineteen at Ishval.

And it's not like he doesn't already know that Amestris is sort of broken, with the military being a special kind of fucked up all of its own, but that's a whole new tier on this bullshit cake.

Ed's nineteen _now_. He hadn't been able to pull the trigger when he was fifteen and trying to save the world as he knew it, and he knows without trying that he can't now either. Hell, even remembering how Mustang had destroyed the entire room of zombie dolls with fire still unsettles him, never mind that those dolls hadn't been anywhere near recognisably human, and that moment of flash and flame had been nothing compared to the calm deliberation he knows sniper work must take.

But the military had seen that unshakeable aim and pointed Hawkeye at the warfield; Hawkeye had gone and done it so precisely that people still named her for it years later.

It's messed up, from one end to the other, and for this once his giving up of alchemy actually seems fortunate in and of itself. Ed has no idea how Mustang had explained it on the paperwork, but with all the higher ups basically out of commission no one was going to question the Flame Alchemist's word on something that was definitely an alchemical matter, and it'd opened the road free and clear for his resignation.

If he'd still had his alchemy – well, it's not like the brass hadn't already known that the Fullmetal Alchemist was skilled, he'd established that right from the get go, but the things he'd pulled during the Promised Day in full view of everyone and their commanding officer hadn't even been on the same scale as transmuting a spear from the floor.

Ed would've put in his resignation anyway, there was no point to it now that they'd gotten Al's body back, but he has the sinking certainty that it wouldn't have gone so smoothly.

You could beat the homunculi out of the equation but there was no taking away the centuries of bloody history; Amestris wanted artillery, wanted warhorses, wanted an arsenal of human weapons.

Ed had been one of them, and at his age Lieutenant Hawkeye was already a killer at war. The thought is enough to horrify him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's just kinda messed up y'know

**Author's Note:**

> comments are love ♥
> 
> i literally do not plan anything i write ever, but whatever fics that happen will be added to this series (mostly to this work specifically) and posted on [tumblr](https://presumenothing.tumblr.com/) – subscribe/follow as you like!
> 
> i'm also semi-permanently open for prompts on tumblr, so hit up that askbox if there's anything you'd like to see here


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